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JAN 13 1927 : 
By, ae 
Cr oaieni sew 






BOU51: S87 WS2Z6 

Streeter, Burnett Hillman, 
1874-1937. 

Reality 











Yo tw 
ye 


a ay 





RE Aw | Tey 


By the same Author 


The Four Gospels; A Study of Origins 
Restatement and Reunion 


In part by the same Author 


Oxford Studies in the Synoptic Problem 


Foundations 

Concerning Prayer 

Immortahty 

The Spirit 

God and the Struggle for Existence 
The Sadhu 





REALITY 


A NEW CORRELATION OF 
SCIENCE AND RELIGION 


hee ANT2 1927 
“‘y °y 
“OL ogien > 






BY 
BURNETT HILLMAN STREETER 


FELLOW OF QUEEN’S COLLEGE, OXFORD; CANON OF HEREFORD 
FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
HON. D.D. EDIN, 


jew Bork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 


1926 
All rights reserved 


Truth is the ground of science, the centre wherein all things 


repose, and is the type of eternity. 
Sir Pumir SIpNey. 


CoPpyrRiIGHT, 1926, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 





Set up and electrotyped. 
Published November, 1926, 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
BY THE CORNWALL PRESS 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I 
PAGE 
PE ETAL TRAE \00 N08. Ue ALU eetvC ern ean Se gE MO 1 
CHAP RE TUALL 
SciencE, ART, AND RELIGION ... 23 
Additional Note—CHRISTIANITY AND ont thowe 
GEOR Pe) LAIN Or nee Ma rain iee Lanes SERS eg, 


CHAPTER III 


An ANCIENT SToRY. . : : : RCS I peas ag: S| 
CHAPTER IV 

Two Ways oF KNOWLEDGE . : : ( ‘ Banal | 

Additional Notes—A. ee Re B. Kanrt’s 

THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE ! : i 5 sian is fa 
CHART BR iv. 

Tue Lire-Forcr, THE ABSOLUTE, OR Gop. . . . 115 
CHAPTER: VI 

CREATIVE STRIFE .. : , RY Ne TOD CREP aria ful aa O39 


vl REALITY 


CHAPTER VII 


Tue CHRIST 


CHAPTER VIII 


Tue DEFEAT oF Evin 


CHAPTER Ix 


RELIGION AND THE New PsycHoLocy . 


CHAPTER X 


IMMORTALITY 


APPENDICES 


I 
DREAM PSYCHOLOGY AND THE Mystic VISION 


II 
Instinct AND MoRALITY 


INDEX or NAMES 


INDEX OF SUBJECTS . 


PAGE 


175 


217 


265 


305 


319 


338 
345 
347 


INTRODUCTION 


THE purpose of this book is to outline, in the simplest 
and clearest language I can command, a position in which 
my own mind has found rest after thirty years of search. 
But in order that the point of view from which it is 
written may be the more easily apprehended I have, after 
some hesitation, thought it well to preface it with a few 
details of an autobiographical nature. 

I came up to Oxford with a scholarship in Classics 
in 1893, fully determined to follow my father in the 
profession of the Law. But about the end of my second 
year—I was reading ‘Greats—I realised quite suddenly 
that the religious beliefs in which I had been brought 
up rested on a very slender intellectual foundation; and 
I awoke one day to find myself an agnostic. After a 
year or so of thought and reading, and discussion with 
older friends, I reached, through the gateway of T. H. 
Green’s philosophy, what at the time seemed to me an 
adequate intellectual basis of religion—largely taken 
over, in a not too well-digested form, from the earlier 
writings of Illingworth and Gore. The conviction was 
then borne in upon me that it was my duty to give my 
life to the task of further working out, and passing on 
to others, the truth which I had seen; and I decided 
to seek ordination. After taking my Degree I read 
Theology, and there opened up a possibility, which had 
not previously occurred to me, that my work might be in 

Vil 


vill REALITY 


Oxford; but it was not till some little time after I 
had been elected to a Fellowship that I realised how 
very far from being intellectually water-tight was the 
position which I had reached. The restraining advice 
of a senior friend kept me from relinquishing my Orders; 
but I think that I should ultimately have taken this 
step but for the reinvigorating inspiration of the Summer 
Conferences of the Student Christian Movement, which 
I began to attend in 1905. Here I gained a renewed 
confidence that in Religion man can attain to a genuine 
apprehension of Reality, of that ‘Beyond which is also 
Within’, in a way and of a kind which any intellectual 
theory of the Universe must account for or confess 
itself bankrupt. 

I startea again on my quest with a new courage, 
but with no weakening of my old conviction that religion 
in its mystical, emotional or practical expression was, 
to me at any rate, of little value if divorced from 
intellectual integrity. I endeavoured to work on in 
the spirit of the philosopher who, in Samuel Butler’s 
famous phrase, ‘should have given up all, even Christ 
Himself, for Christ’s sake’. 

It has been my peculiar good fortune to have come 
into a personal contact, which admitted of long and 
repeated discussion of large problems, with an excep- 
tional number of fellow-seekers after truth—philosophers, 
scientists, and others whose interest was mainly in art, 
literature or practical life, as well as theologians of many 
Christian denominations, and students or adherents of 
the great religions of the East. Looking back over my 
life, I feel that I have learnt more in this way than 
from the books which I have read. I owe a special 
debt to those friends who were associated with me in 
the series of ‘group-books’-—Foundations, Concerning 


INTRODUCTION 1x 


Prayer, Immortality, and The Spirit. The method of 
systematic group discussion employed in the preparation 
of these was an invaluable intellectual discipline, besides 
suggesting to me avenues of further investigation which 
otherwise I might never have explored. 

Before the last of these symposia was published, I 
had set to work on a scheme, long-ago projected but 
often interrupted, for a book which would clear up 
my own mind by presenting in a reasonable compass a 
synthetic summary of the position which I had reached 
up to date. A good deal of what is here printed is 
a re-writing of material put together then (1919-21). 
Towards the end of 1921 I laid this work aside in order 
to gather up the results of investigations, started at 
a much earlier date, into the origins of the Gospels; 
these were published under the title The Four Gospels, 
late in 1924. The interruption was fortunate, since it 
enabled me, by sitting at the feet of scientific friends, 
to get some inkling (if only at second hand) of the 
general trend of some of the modern developments in 
Physics, and to read some of the more recent literature - 
bearing on that new conception of the nature of 
scientific knowledge which is being put forward by 
workers in that field. This has led to a considerable 
re-orientation of much that I had previously drafted. 

It is now many years since it first began to dawn 
upon me that, during the earlier years of my search, 
I had been doing—what, so far as I see, most other 
searchers after truth in the sphere of Religion have done 
—I had been asking the wrong question. I will explain 
my meaning. Instinctively anyone brought up in the 
Christian tradition—provided always he does not belong 
to the number of those who would prefer to think it 
false—frames his question in the form, Is Christianity 


x REALITY 


true? But merely to state the question thus precludes 
a satisfactory answer; for the very form of the question 
implies that Religion is itself the problem, whereas 
the truth of Religion is a matter worth inquiring about 
only if, and in so far as, it offers a solution of the 
problems which are posed oe life—of which the problem 
of evil is the chief. 

Is there not wrong too bitter for atoning? 

What are these desperate and hideous years? 

Hast Thou not heard Thy whole creation groaning, 

Sighs of the bondsmen, and a woman’s tears? 

It is the Universe itself that compels us to ask 
questions. First there are theoretical questions. Are 
we to think of It as alive or dead? If alive, what is 
It after? Or, in more formal words, must Reality be 
thought of only in terms of quantity, or is quality (or 
value) also real? Then comes the fact of evil ever 
forcing us to face the practical question, Is there any 
way in which I personally can overcome, and help others 
to overcome, the suffering and the wrong? 

By those who first heard it the Christian message 
was called ‘Gospel’, that is, ‘good news’. It was so 
named because to them it did seem to give an answer 
both to the theoretical and to the practical questions. 
Life posed the riddle; Religion had found an answer. 
Life has not ceased to pose its riddle; but who to-day 
has an answer which to the majority seems to have the 
authentic ring? Those who are without Religion admit 
they have no answer. The Christian theologian stands 
on the defensive. Having once begun by asking the 
wrong question, he finds himself ‘defending the faith’; 
in effect, he has got himself into the position of being 
anxious to save Religion, instead of expecting Religion 
to save him. 


INTRODUCTION i 


This book, then, is not a ‘Defence of Christianity’ ; 
indeed, in Christianity as traditionally presented there 
are some things which (if I had any taste for theological 
controversy) I should be more inclined to attack than 
to defend. It is an endeavour to discover Truth. 

Accordingly I start off to interrogate the Universe 
afresh. I ask whether Quality as well as Quantity is 
of the essence of Reality. When I go on to inquire 
whence and how we may get light on the Quality, I 
cannot but see that much of the evidence to be studied 
consists in the phenomena—social, historical, psycho- 
logical—of human religion, of which the most important 
is the fact that Christ once lived and taught and died. 
From a consideration of this evidence there seems to me 
to emerge a new way of approaching certain old ideas. 
This, unless I am mistaken, enables one to see that there 
is an answer to the riddle set by life in a Religion which 
has the quality of Vision and Power—the vision of truth 
and the power to overcome. 

The questions I discuss—whatever be the value of 
answers which I seem to myself to have found—are 
living questions to every human being; and I shall have 
failed in my object if this book is intelligible only to 
philosophers, scientists and theologians. It is addressed 
in the first instance to the man who has no special 
training in any of these subjects. That the book as a 
whole will prove easy reading, I am fairly confident. In 
the earlier chapters, while the general position set out 
is in itself simple and straightforward, it has, in order 
to expound this, been necessary to criticise certain 
features in Materialism, Absolutism and other theories; 
and some of the sections in which this is attempted 
naturally make a more serious claim on the reader’s 
attention. I believe, however, that even here I have 


xil REALITY 


succeeded in so writing that the main draft of the 
argument will be clear to any person of ordinary educa- 
tion, even if he has no technical knowledge of the subject. 
Moreover, the Synopses at the head of each chapter will 
enable the reader, if he finds any particular section 
difficult or uninteresting, to skip it without losing sight 
of the general purport of the chapter. 

Nevertheless, although this book is not primarily 
intended for philosophers and theologians, it is my hope 
that some of these will deign to read it. For, apart 
from certain sections, it is in no sense a popularisation 
of currently accepted views. It is an attempt to limn 
out a position which, taken as a whole, is a new one. 
My debt, of course, to the thought and writings of 
others will be obvious on every page; but if regard 
be had, not so much to detailed considerations, as to 
the mode of co-ordinating the essential data and to the 
trend of the argument as a whole, I believe that I am 
justified in speaking of it as a new correlation of Science 
and Religion. 

_ In Chapters II. and IV. I sketch out what is, in 
effect, a new Theory of Knowledge. To this, if it were 
worked out into a formal system, I should be inclined 
to give the name Bi-Representationism. But to have 
worked out such a system with an elaborate apparatus 
of technical terminology might have resulted in a wrong 
impression of the main conception of the book. For, 
if I am right in maintaining that the language natural 
to Religion is more closely akin to Art than to Science, 
then a Philosophy of Religion is likely the better to 
reflect the spirit of that which it endeavours to inter- 
pret, the more its exposition avoids technicalities and 
is expressed in a way that can be imaginatively, as well 
as conceptually, realised. At any rate, so far as this 


INTRODUCTION xiii 


theory is concerned, I shall be more than satisfied if I 
have suggested an outline which others more competent 
than myself may develop or amend. 

To various friends who have read the whole or part 
of the book in MS. or proof I owe a debt of gratitude, 
more especially to Miss Chilcott of Lady Margaret Hall, 
Mr. Will Spens of Corpus Christi, Cambridge, Mr. A. 8. 
L. Farquharson of University College, Oxford, Arch- 
deacon Lilley of Hereford, Mr. W. Force Stead, and 
Mr. Norman Ault; and to Miss Earp of Cumnor, both 
for this and also for the preparation of the Indexes. 


B. H. STREETER. 
Oxrorp, Sept. 1926. 





MATERIALISM 
SYNOPSIS 


NEWTON AND Darwin 


By discovering a mechanism in the movements of the heavenly 
bodies, Newton made Materialism a plausible explanation of the Uni- 
verse—apart from living beings. 

Darwin, by his theory of Natural Selection, seemed to have found a 
mechanism capable of explaining the origin of living beings as well. All 
questions became reducible to problems of molecular physics. 

From this it would follow that consciousness in any of its forms— 
whether thought, feeling, or will—can initiate nothing; it is merely an 
‘epiphenomenon’, 7.e. a functionless shadow cast by the material process. 

But the view that consciousness is no more than a passive shadow 
entails certain paradoxical conclusions—among others that Science itself 
is an illusion. 

Tup Power or MrrapHor 


The human mind naturally thinks in pictures; when it thinks of 
the Totality of things this is inevitable. But it is important to choose 
the picture, metaphor or myth which is most illuminating. 

Theism pictures the Power behind the Universe as in some way 
resembling human personality; this is decried as anthropomorphism, 2.e. 
as a making of God in the image of man. Materialism pictures the 
Universe as an Infinite Machine; this by analogy may be called mech- 
anomorphism. 

Mechanomorphism is essentially myth; but the dazzling triumphs of 
machinery in the nineteenth century made it imaginatively an attractive 
myth. Yet every machine is an instrument designed to effect a defi- 
nitely realised purpose, and is itself the expression of the concentrated 
intelligence of an inventor. It is fallacious to overlook this, and then 
apply the metaphor of a machine to the Universe as if the oversight 
made no difference. 


Tur Conceprion of MrcHANISM 


In origin Mechanism is an abstract quality corresponding to the con- 
crete thing machine; that is to say, it is a quality, not of any object 
existing in Nature, but of certain artificial constructions made by man. 
Hence to apply the conception to Nature in anything like its original 
sense is to be guilty of anthropomorphism in a double degree. 

As employed by Science the conception of Mechanism definitely 


2 


I 


MATERIALISM 


excludes certain of the most essential elements in the original meaning. 
That being so, it is no longer an abstract term corresponding to an actu- 
ally existing object; it has become a pure symbol. It ceases, therefore, to 
be an explanation of anything. Still less can the Universe be explained 
in terms of something which never has existed, nor could exist, but is a 
symbol of an abstract relationship. (An objection to this argument from 
the standpoint of the science of Mechanics is discussed in a footnote.) 

Recent Science rejects the old conceptions of Matter, Force and 
Causation, making it hard to frame a ‘model’ of how the Mechanism 
works. Moreover, the apparent inconsistency between the laws seeming 
to apply to the behaviour of the atom has done away with the clear-cut 
simplicity which made Mechanism an attractive explanation. Professor 
Whitehead’s view that the atom should be regarded rather as an organ- 
ism than as a mechanism. 


Matrer 


The resolution of the atom into proton and electrons, though its 
importance from the philosophical standpoint is probably not great, 
strikes at the imaginative basis of popular Materialism. It has also 
served to call the attention of scientific workers to the philosophical 
problems raised by the fact of knowledge. 


Force 


Recent physicists object that the old conception of Force as ‘some- 
thing which pulls or pushes’ is anthropomorphic, and would substitute 
the conception of Energy Potential and Kinetic. (Is not potentiality an 
explanation in terms of expectation and therefore equally anthropo- 
morphic?) But, if the old conception of Force is surrendered, the 
meaning of Mechanism becomes still more attenuated. 


Cause AND EFrrecr 


The meaning of Causation is a highly debatable question. Unless, 
however, we are prepared to follow the lead of the Philosophical 
Idealists, we must admit that it is a symbolic representation of an 
element in Ultimate Reality as to the real nature of which we know 
nothing. In either case the old mechanistic materialism is ruled out. 


RELATIVITY 


The resolution of space and time into ‘space-time’ raises in an acute 
form the question, What is matter? and Materialism loses its 
prima facie plausibility in proportion as matter ceases to be a simple, 
solid, permanent reality. 


I 
MATERIALISM 


NEWTON AND DARWIN 


MATERIALISM as a system goes back past Epicurus to 
Democritus, four hundred years B.c. and more. It did 
not become plausible till after Newton. 


I had rather [wrote Bacon, the apostle of the inductive 
methods of modern science] believe all the fables in the Legend 
and the Talmud and the Alcoran than that this universal 
frame is without a mind. 


And such is still the commonsense verdict of ordinary 
humanity. The discoveries of Newton unveiled a 
mechanism. It was this that woke the scepticism of the 
thinking few. Before that, men instinctively looked to 
the heavens and there saw declared the glory of God and 
a firmament that showed His handiwork. Newton 
explained the working of it all on a few simple mechanical 
principles. It was left to others to draw the moral to 
which Laplace gave classical expression—when asked 
why, in a treatise on Astronomy, God was nowhere 
mentioned—‘Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis’. 
But that hypothesis still seemed to be needed in the 
domain of Natural History, and it seemed indispensable 
to account for the origin of Man. In the delicate adjust- 
ment of each and every one of the bodily organs to the 
function it subserves—the eye for seeing, the fin for 
4 


CHAP. I MATERIALISM DB 


swimming, the wing for flight—and still more in the fact 
of Reason manifest in the mind of man, there still 
appeared to be evidence unmistakable of the conscious 
purpose and intelligent design of a wise Creator. 

Then came Darwin, indicating a mechanism, auto- 
matic in its working, which might explain this too. 

Darwin started from two facts of familiar observation. 
(1) The several offspring of any living organism, plant 
or animal, are never all exactly alike; they ‘vary’ 
slightly both from the parent and from one another. 
(2) Variations from the type form appearing in an 
individual may be inherited by its descendants. 

Upon his creative imagination flashed the idea of 
applying to these facts the conception of ‘Natural 
Selection’. He argued that a variation from the 
standard type might often be of such a character as to 
make it easier for the individual to procure food, to 
escape its enemies, or in some other way have a better 
chance in the struggle for existence. Whenever this 
happened, the individual so equipped would survive 
longer than the rest and would leave behind it more 
descendants. If its descendants inherited the useful 
variation, they, too, would do the same. On the other 
hand, the descendants of those individuals of the stock 
which lacked this new equipment would in every genera- 
tion die sooner, or leave behind them less offspring, than 
their more fortunate cousins. Hence the new type would 
gradually, at least in certain areas, replace the old. A 
stock-farmer deliberately ‘selects’ for parentage such 
individuals as display some quality he most desires. 
According as his aim is milk or meat, he breeds from 
one or another set of cattle. Thus by selective breeding 
from individuals which exhibit some measure of variation 
in the direction he desires, gradually in the course of 


6 REALITY CHAP. 


several generations he, so to speak, piles up small 
variations into great, and produces a herd which, with 
some degree of exaggeration, might be styled a new sub- 
species. Darwin conceived of Natural Selection as a 
mechanism capable of producing new species by a simi- 
lar piling up of small variations spread over an immense 
period of time. And it was'a mechanism which could 
function automatically. For the mere fact that a par- 
ticular variation happens to give an individual an 
advantage in the struggle for existence means that that 
individual has a chance above the average of propagating 
its kind. The discrimination which the stock-farmer 
effects by selective breeding, in Nature results from the 
earlier death of the less well-equipped. Automatically, 
therefore, in every generation those best adapted to their 
environment increase and multiply, the rest diminish 
and may ultimately become extinct. So long as the crop 
of variation is sufficiently abundant, individuals will 
constantly occur which are in some ways. better 
adapted to their environment than any heretofore exist- 
ent, and Nature will automatically select and breed 
from these. The human eye is an instrument extraor- 
dinarily elaborate and wonderfully adapted for its pur- 
pose—so wonderfully, said Paley, that it is conclusive 
evidence of the conscious design of an intelligent Creator. 
Darwin replied that Natural Selection would suffice, 
given only, to start with, a spot of protoplasm specially 
sensitive to light, and the occurrence of indefinite and 
minute variations over a sufficiently long period of time. 
All can be explained in terms of mechanism, automatic 
and unconscious. 

Biology since Darwin has not stood still; but it 
would be outside my present purpose to discuss the 
question of the bearings of later discovery on his con- 


I MATERIALISM 7 


ception of the mechanism of evolution. I am only con- 
cerned to point out here how inevitable it was that the 
work of Darwin should seem to bring to its triumphant 
climax the long and fruitful effort of Astronomy, Physics 
and Chemistry to explain the Universe completely in 
mathematical and mechanical terms. All questions, it 
was proclaimed, were reducible in the last resort to prob- 
lems of molecular Physics. Assume—it is a big assump- 
tion—certain properties as somehow self-existent in the 
atom, and some great initial ‘push’, and everything else 
would automatically evolve, as a necessary consequence 
rigidly determined by the structure of matter and the 
original direction of primal energy. 

There follows by inexorable logic the ineluctable 
conclusion that thought, feeling, will, can initiate noth- 
ing, change nothing, do nothing. Consciousness is only 
an ‘epiphenomenon’, a functionless shadow cast by auto- 
matic changes in that material process which is the sole 
reality. | 

This last conclusion, however—and without doubt it 
is the only conclusion which the premises admit—lands us 
in a difficulty, and one that appears the greater the more 
closely it is examined. The ‘shadow’ has the curious 
property that it is conscious of itself. Moreover, though 
it is alleged to be impotent to do, it is certainly potent to 
think and to know—otherwise the whole structure of the 
sciences is illusion, and so the case for regarding con- 
sciousness as a epiphenomenon is illusion too. 

Again, reasoning, the psychologists insist, is a function 
of ‘conation’ or will; and in the course of biological 
evolution thought certainly appears as secondary to 
desire (cf. p. 77), unless, then, it be a ‘variation’ useful 
to the individual in the struggle for existence, why has 
Natural Selection so enormously developed it. Yet 


8 REALITY CHAP. 


again, if thought is a product of the Will to live, it is 
odd that it should discover that life itself is a process 
mechanically determined and therefore destitute of will. 
It is odd, too, that a Universe which is itself an autom- 
aton should give birth to little automata alive enough 
to know that their life is an illusion. 1 

Yet again, if he starts with the assumption that mat- 
ter alone is real, and that all that happens is the result 
of its mechanically determined movements, the Mate- 
rialist must deny to consciousness any independent 
activity. How then can he allow any validity to Science 
itself? Science is a system of knowledge built up by the 
concentrated thought of generations of acute inquirers, 
and thought is an act of consciousness. If consciousness 
is a passive shadow, Science is just a fainter shadow 
cast upon the first by the Unknown. 


Tue Power or METAPHOR 


The attractiveness of Materialism depends, to an 
extent which is not commonly recognised, on its appeal 
to the imagination. The human mind, even when highly 
trained, thinks to a great extent in pictures. Indeed, it is 
one purpose of this book to suggest that when the 
human mind tries to envisage the Universe as a whole, it 
can do no other, and that therefore true wisdom lies in 
frankly accepting this necessary limitation, and con- 
centrating our efforts on finding the right picture. In 
studying ordinary objects we begin by noticing their 
resemblance to things already known, and so assigning 
them to this class or to that. But the Universe is like 
nothing but itself; classification, which is the very basis 
of all ordinary knowledge, is here meaningless, for the 
thing to be studied can be classed with nothing else. The 
best we can do is to find the illuminating metaphor, the 


i MATERIALISM 9 


picturesque analogy, the symbol or the myth, which will 
help us to apprehend some aspects of the truth. The 
Materialism of the last century I regard as a metaphor 
of this kind. It pictured the Universe as an Infinite 
Machine. A belief in God which ascribes to the Ultimate 
Reality qualities quite essentially human, like reason or 
love, is often decried as anthropomorphism, as an attempt 
to fashion the Infinite after man’s own image. But if 
Theism is anthropomorphism, Materialism is mechano- 
morphism, an attempt to fashion the Infinite in the 
image of a machine. 

Mechanomorphism is essentially myth—and, up to a 
point, useful and illuminating myth. And it was a myth 
specially attractive in the later Victorian age, when the 
world was still dazzled by that unending procession of 
fresh mechanical inventions which our sated imagina- 
tions take as a matter of course. Fabrics with a delicacy 
of pattern rivalling the finest wrought by the alert brain 
and skilful fingers of living human agents, were being 
produced by dead machinery working in rigid unalter- 
able planes and circles, impelled by impersonal forces 
like electricity or steam. And the pattern of the 
Universe that Science was revealing seemed to be the 
result of some all-pervading energy working in accord 
with rigid unalterable laws. How easy so to think of It! 
Go into a printing-house: see, at one end of the machine, 
a great blank roll of paper; at the other, neatly folded up 
and counted, copies of a journal pouring out, replete with 
information, argument and rhetoric. Why may we not 
picture the Universe as a similar machine—at one end 
the formless nebule wafted through the inane; at the 
other the mind of man, capable of poetry, heroism and 
love? 

Press the analogy and it reads a very different lesson. 


10 REALITY CHAP. 


The machine, I grant, by purely mechanical processes 
turns blank paper into speaking literature; but what 
guides it and what finds expression in the written words 
is living intelligence. I grant, too, that it has reached 
its present perfection as a result of a long, slow evolution 
through simpler stages; but to that evolution—to the 
designing, to the co-ordinating, to the intricate adapta-_ 
tion of those mechanic forces themselves—have gone 
centuries of conscious thought and invention, ever devel- 
oping, improving, elaborating the rhythmic harmony 
of inter-related parts; and every modification at every 
stage was inspired by conscious purpose striving for the 
attainment of some clearly envisaged end. A machine 
as it stands is a dead and rigid thing, and the force which 
drives it is an unconscious force; but, for all that, the 
simplest machine is the epitome and distillation of long- 
concentrated conscious purpose linked with keen intel- 
ligence. It has taken centuries of conscious and 
intelligent effort to produce the machine which prints 
our morning paper, and has this Universe,—a machine | 
the complexity and intricacy of which baffles the intel- 
lect and bewilders the imagination,—come into existence 
of itself, the result of blind unconscious force? Is the 
‘Universe one gigantic accident consequent upon an 
‘ infinite succession of happy flukes? Of all the strange 
beliefs that man has cherished, none flaunts a paradox 
so staggering as this. 


Tuer CoNcEPTION OF MECHANISM 


At this point I am compelled to touch on some 
questions of a more technical character. The reader 
who is conversant, even to a small extent, with scientific 
or with philosophic discussion will, I hope, find no 
difficulty in following my argument, whether he agrees 


u MATERIALISM 11 


with it or not. But any one who has no special interest 
either in Science or in Philosophy would do well, at any 
rate on a first reading of this book, to omit the remainder 
of the present chapter. 

The conception of the Universe as an Infinite Machine 
is obviously metaphor; and though metaphors of this 
kind may be taken literally by the unreflective, thinkers 
recognise them as myth. It is otherwise with abstract 
terms. Of such terms Mechanism has proved one of the 
most delusive. Mechanism is the abstract conception 
which corresponds to the concrete thing machine; 
in origin it Js a generalisation arrived at from the con- 
templation of actual machines. But every actual machine 
is a thing made by man for the attainment of some 
purely human end. Hence to use the term mechanism 
at all for the description of natural phenomena is to be 
guilty of anthropomorphism—if that be a matter of 
guilt—in a double degree. The anthropomorphism of 
religion interprets the Universe in terms of human 
personality—that is to say, in terms of the most remark- 
able natural product of that Universe. But mechanism 
is a conception doubly anthropomorphic, for it is derived 
from artificial constructions devised by human personali- 
ties for their own private uses. 

The conception of Mechanism has been the master 
key of scientific discovery. Since, however, in origin 
it is a metaphor drawn from observation of machinery, 
it is of the first importance to beware lest illegitimate 
associations derived from its original non-scientific sense 
be allowed to creep unawares into its scientific usage. 
Otherwise an element of mythology will make its 
way into the citadel of Science. Now a machine is 
essentially an instrument; it is not in itself a creative 
power. It is a method by which creative thought seeks 


12 REALITY CHAR: 


to attain ends clearly foreseen. It is something initiated 
by intelligence, controlled by a living agent and directed 
by purpose. Since then, the abstract idea of mechanism 
is reached by way of generalisation from actual machines, 
it ought properly to include all this. As a matter 
of fact, it is employed by Science expressly in order 
to exclude everything of the sort. If this were merely 
a question of the use of words, it would not matter. The 
scientist—provided he is careful always to define his 
terms—has a right, like Alice's’ Humpty Dumpty, to 
make words mean what he chooses. But it is not legiti- 
mate to employ a word in an attenuated meaning and 
to expect at the same time to retain the ‘good-will’, 
so to speak, of its old ‘connection’. My point is this: 
an actual machine is a ‘going concern’; but it is that 
only because it was designed and is controlled by 
intelligence and purpose; leave out these and it is noth- 
ing at all. If then you explain Nature—which is also 
a ‘going concern’—in terms of mechanism while expressly 
excluding from the connotation of that word all 
reference to intelligence and purpose, you are explaining 
it in terms of something that never has existed and 
never could. Mechanism so conceived is pure symbol, 
it is simply a name for an abstract relation which has 
not corresponding to it any concrete object of which we 
have actual experience. 

Now mathematicians constantly reach valuable 
results by making use of symbols, such as Y — l, to 
which nothing in human experience is known to corre- 
spond. Physical Science is entitled to do the same; and 
it has done so, with conspicuous success, in the case of 
this conception of mechanism. Indeed it has been this 
conception more than any other that has thrown wide 
open to the human race the door of knowledge. But it is 


zi MATERIALISM 13 


quite another matter to interpret the Universe as a whole 
in terms of mechanism, without asking for what the 
concept mechanism as used by Science really stands. 

Science uses the concept of mechanism as a principle 
by means of which it is possible to co-ordinate in- 
numerable observations dealing with moving bodies. 
In so far as any concept which reduces chaos to system 
may properly be called an explanation, it may be said 
to ‘explain’ them. But it is not explanation in the 
same sense as when we find that some unknown thing 
is a member of a class of things already known, or when 
the unfamiliar is ‘explained’ by its likeness to the 
familiar (cf. p. 80). If mechanism in scientific usage 
were really the equivalent in abstract thought of the con- 
crete thing machine, then to discover mechanism in 
Nature would be to ‘explain’ Nature in this sense. It 
would mean to discover that the obscure working of 
Nature has the closest resemblance to that familiar object 
of everyday life, a machine, that is to say, to something 
initiated by intelligence, controlled by a living agent and 
directed by purpose. Whereas, in fact, the mechanism of 
which the scientist speaks is an abstract idea which cor- 
responds to the concrete object machine only if these 
essential characteristics of every actual machine are left 
out; that is to say, it resembles something that nowhere 
exists outside the mind of the scientist. Clearly this is 
not explaining the obscure working of Nature in terms 
of a familiar object of daily life, the unknown in terms 
of the known, but the contrary. It is explaining con- 
crete observed fact by the aid of a conception which in 
the last resort is purely symbolic. In other words, 
mechanism, in its scientific use, is a mode of thinking; 
it is not a mode of being." 

1 A friend who had read the preceding paragraphs raised the objection 


14 REALITY CHAP. 


There is a further point. In the past the concept 
of mechanism has been specially fruitful for scientific 
discovery in relation to what Clerk-Maxwell called ‘the 
model’, that is, the imaginative picture of ‘how it works’ 
which precedes, and may also control, the formulation 
of a new hypothesis. But in so far’ as ‘the model’ 
is a mental picture, it is extremely difficult to keep out 
of the picture the idea of Matter as solid substance, of 
Force as something which pushes or pulls, and of 
Causation as a kind of mechanical link between the 
motive force and the matter which it moves—much as 
the piston is the link between the steam that supplies 
the power and the wheel which the crank turns. Granted 
the adequacy of these conceptions of Matter, Force and 
Causation, the word ‘mechanism’, even with all its orig- 
inal associations with the word machine, is an illuminat- 
ing metaphor. But to the modern scientist, as I shall 
show later, these conceptions are all impossibly naive. 

A friend engaged in advanced research in Physics, 





that, while my argument holds good in regard to popular thinking, it is 
not quite fair if applied to strictly scientific thought. ‘I do not think’, 
he writes, ‘that the associations of the word mechanism have as much to 
do with machines as you suggest. Mechanics is the word which mechan- 
ism suggests to the scientist; and for the ordinary scientist, as opposed to 
the engineer, mechanics does not suggest machines so much as a deter- 
minate system of matter and motion’. To this I would reply that, if and 
in so far as the objection is a sound one, it only adds weight to my main 
contention that the conception of mechanism as used by Science is a 
symbol—of course an absolutely necessary symbol—for an abstract rela- 
tion, and that it isa mode of thinking rather than a mode of being. The 
diagrams and equations with whicn the science of mechanics operates are 
highly abstract entities. Like machines they are man-made, but they are 
much further removed from concrete reality. Moreover, unless I entirely 
misconceive the matter, a diagram (whether actually drawn on paper or 
implied in an equation) is really only a convenient way of making in 
the most generalised form a statement to the effect that, supposing there 
existed a mechanical contrivance by which certain forces of given extent 
could be made to operate along given directions, the result would be as 
shewn. Again, conceptions like ‘equilibrium’ or ‘mechanical system’ are 
general abstractions ultimately derived from concrete mechanical con- 
trivances. I hold, therefore, that whenever the word ‘mechanism’ is used 
without conscious realisation that it is symbolic, the user is always 
haunted by the ghost of its original association with the word ‘mbchine’. 


t MATERIALISM 15 


to whom I showed the above paragraph in typescript, 
writes to me as follows: 


I don’t know whether it matters for your purpose (since 
popular materialism is of course not based on the most modern 
science), but the ‘model’ is rather discredited nowadays. If it 
happens to be useful, any suggestions it can make are always 
welcome, but the ideal of ‘explaining’ everything so that the 
mechanism of the processes shall be evident is no longer com- 
mon, and the desire to understand things, in this sense, is being 
found to be nearly as often harmful as helpful. The majority, I 
think, of the brilliant advances in physics which this century 
has seen have been made by methods which ignore, or in some 
cases even defy, the canons of successful explanation which 
were accepted in Maxwell’s time. We are getting quite used 
to theories which are ‘right’ in the sense that they predict all 
sorts of unexpected things correctly, but which remain them- 
selves unintelligible, or even self-contradictory, when one tries 
to ‘understand’ them. 


With this I would ask the reader to compare this 
excerpt from the latest work of that distinguished 
scientific thinker, Professor Whitehead.* 


It is orthodox to hold that there is nothing in biology but 
what is physical mechanism under somewhat complex circum- 
stances. One difficulty in this position is the present confusion 
as to the foundational concepts of physical science. ... Ié 
cannot be too clearly understood [italics not in original] that 
the various physical laws which appear to apply to the 
behaviour of atoms are not mutually consistent as at present 
formulated. The appeal to mechanism on behalf of biology 
was in its origin an appeal to the well-attested self-consistent 
physical concepts as expressing the basis of all natural phe- 
nomena. But at present there is no such system of concepts. 
Science is taking on a new aspect which is neither purely 
physical, nor purely biological. It is becoming the study of 
organisms. Biology is the study of the larger organisms; 
whereas physics is the study of the smaller organisms. 


1 Science and the Modern World, p. 145. (Cambridge University 
Press, 1926.) 


LOU, REALITY CHAP. 


That beautiful, clear-cut simplicity which was once 
the main attraction of mechanistic Materialism has to- 
day completely disappeared. 


MATTER 


The atom—once supposed to be the ultimate unit of 
matter and to be a solid substance comparable to an 
infinitesimal pellet of shot—has now been analysed by 
Physics into a kind of solar system, consisting of one 
or more ‘electrons’ revolving round a centre known as a 
‘proton’. It is believed that, relatively to the size of 
these infinitesimal ‘planets’, their orbits are larger 
than those of the Solar System. Thus the amount of 
‘solid substance’ as compared with the extent of empty 
space within the atom is actually less than the amount 
of solid matter in the planets as compared with the 
empty space in the Solar System—in which the orbit 
of Neptune is 5000 million miles across. Further, it 
seems more probable than not that the electron should 
be regarded not as ‘a solid substance’ at all but as a unit 
of electric force. 

Philosophers say that this discovery makes no 
difference at all to any conclusion they had previously 
held. I think they are right. But it does make a dif- 
ference to popular materialism. To the popular mind 
—and all of us at times fall back to the level of popular 
thinking—the attractiveness of the theory that Matter 
is the prime reality, depends on the fact that life and 
thought are invisible, impalpable and evanescent, while 
material objects are not. If I thump on the ground with 
my stick, there is a solid reality which will outlast me 
and all my hopes or theories. But if matter is not solid 
at all, if in the last resort it can be resolved into in- 
finitesimal points of electric foree—it no longer strikes 


I MATERIALISM 17 


the imagination as being so much more real than 
invisibilities like life or thought. 

Again it is no longer possible to laugh at the meta- 
physician who questions the ultimate validity of the 
hard-and-fast distinction which ordinary common-sense 
would make between mind and matter. Long before the 
physicist has reached the analysis of the atom into 
protons and electrons, he has gone beyond the limits 
of ‘observation’ in the simple and direct sense in which 
I feel something as ‘hard’ or see it as ‘red’—even with a 
microscope to extend my visual powers. The simple 
data of impressions received through the five senses,— 
which after all are the basis of the whole of our 
knowledge of the external world,—have been worked up 
into highly elaborate systems by means of hypotheses 
framed on mathematical and_ scientific principles, 
before the atom itself, much less the electron, comes 
upon the stage. The atom, the electron and the like, 
are not things directly observed, they are hypothetical 
constructions, elaborated by human minds to account 
for actual data of sense; and for the most part these 
data themselves consist of records on delicate measur- 
ing instruments, photographic plates, ete., which are 
‘representations’ of phenomena which do not admit of 
being directly observed. Thus in advanced Physics it 
is more obvious (though not less true) than in every- 
day experience that sense data and interpretative 
inference are inextricably blended; and therefore the 
difficulty of saying whereabouts (if anywhere) in the 
act of knowing, the mental ends and the material begins 
—a, difficulty long ago discerned by philosophers—has 
become a live issue for scientists as well. 


Mind and matter [writes Mr. Bertrand Russell] are for 
certain purposes convenient terms, but are not ultimate 


18 REALITY CHAP. 


realities. Electrons and protons, like the soul, are logical 
fictions.* 


I should not myself have dared to speak so disrespect- 
fully of an electron. But if I were to accept, ‘without 
prejudice’, as lawyers say, the conclusion that electrons, 
protons and the soul are all three ‘logical fictions’, I 
should venture to suggest that the reality—whatever it 
is—to which the fiction ‘soul’ corresponds, differs in one 
important respect from the reality to which the fictions 
‘electron’ and ‘proton’ correspond. ‘The ‘soul’ stands 
for an element in Reality which can frame theories 
about electrons and protons. 


Force 


The old-fashioned conception of Force, the second 
of the fundamental entities taken for granted in the 
popular idea of Mechanism, is being assailed to-day 
almost as vigorously as the old conception of Matter. 


The very idea of Force is what would be termed an anthro- 
pomorphism, that is to say, it ascribes the behaviour of inani- 
mate objects to causes derived from the behaviour of human 
beings. We have come to associate the motion of matter with 
somebody or something pulling or pushing it.* 


What Prof. Soddy is here objecting to is, not the 
use of the term ‘forces’ in Mechanics (where force may 
be defined as that which accelerates, retards or deflects 
massive bodies); but ‘the attempt even to imagine 
forces to exist . .. as the causes of changes of 
energy’ .... 


It is better to try to grasp the meaning of energy as a 
fundamental fact of experience than to begin, with totally 


1 What I believe, p. 17. (Kegan Paul, 1925.) 
°F. Soddy, Matter and Energy, p. 20. (Home University Library.) 


L MATERIALISM 19 


inadequate knowledge, to derive from the actions of living 
beings a shallow analogy. 

He bids us, therefore—when we are considering ulti- 
mates, not merely particular problems of mechanics—to 
discard altogether the idea of Force, and fall back on the 
conceptions of Potential and Kinetic Energy. 

This conclusion, coming from so high an authority, 
I am bound to accept. I would, however, venture to 
point out that potential and kinetic energy are abstract 
intellectual concepts arrived at by generalisation from 
the study of the behaviour of physical bodies—so abstract 
that it is hard for a layman like myself to feel certain he 
apprehends their true meaning. But though an abstract 
conception of this kind may be of far more value to the 
physicist than the conception of ‘force’, I must confess 
that it seems to me to be equally anthropomorphic, only 
in a different way. ‘Potentiality’ 1s not a thing that can 
be observed; it is a conception framed by a human mind 
in order to state in the most highly generalised form 
an expectation that, if such and such observable change 
is made in the existing situation, certain other observable 
changes will take place. I cannot see that an inter- 
pretation in terms of ‘expectation’ is less anthropo- 
morphic than one in terms of ‘pushing’. To me it 
appears to be the replacing of an anthropomorphism 
which has been found to be misleading by one which 
for the purpose in view is of a more useful and illuminat- 
ing character. 

Be that as it may, the point I would press is that, 
if we are no longer allowed to think of Force as some- 
thing which pushes or pulls, the old conception of 
‘mechanism’ has had another hard blow. ‘Mechanism’, 
unless treated as pure symbol, implies Matter as a solid 
substance, Force as that which pulls or pushes, and 


20 REALITY CHAP, 


motion as that which is ‘caused’ by their conjunction. 
Matter and Force have turned into something else. 
There remains to consider Causation. 


CAausE AND EFFECT 


After two hundred years of discussion there is still 
hot debate as to the precise significance of the concept 
of Causation. A couple of pages is all that I can spare 
to the subject without disturbing the proportion of this 
book. I cannot, therefore, hope either to initiate into 
its mysteries a reader unfamiliar with the literature 
or to contribute anything of value to one who has 
digested it. I can merely state my own view as briefly 
and simply as possible, but without any attempt to 
justify it. 

Hume long ago pointed out that causation is not a 
thing that can be observed, and Huxley revived and 
reiterated his arguments. All we can actually observe 
is that B habitually follows A. The assertion then that 
A is the ‘cause’ of B must be based on inference of 
some sort; and this is equally true whether the inference 
is legitimate or not. Kant took up his parable from 
Hume, and went on to maintain that the human mind 
is so constituted that it cannot help making this kind of 
inference. On his view such phenomena can be grasped 
by the mind only if they are related to one another, or at 
least. conceived as capable of being related, as cause and 
effect. I cannot experience a pinprick without taking 
it for granted that it has some cause, though I may quite 
well infer the wrong one. This taking for granted that 
for every event there must be some cause, Kant explains 
by saying that the peculiar quality of the relation we 
call causation is one which is read into experience by 
the experiencing mind. To this particular contention 


I MATERIALISM 21 


of Kant there has never, so far as I know, been given 
any satisfactory answer. 

We seem, then, to be shut up to one of two 
conclusions. 

(1) There is the conclusion which was drawn by the 
school of thinkers known as Philosophic Idealists. In 
Kant’s own view the conception of causation is essentially 
anthropomorphic; it does not hold good in the sphere 
of Ultimate Reality. The Idealists, on the contrary, 
maintain that the relation of cause and effect, though 
contributed by our minds in the act of knowing, is a 
relation which must also hold good of Reality Itself. 
Largely on this ground, they argue that Reality must 
be conceived as rational—in the sense that Its structure 
must be thought of as similar to what we know as 
Reason. The Universe, then, must be viewed as the 
expression of Mind; and our minds partake of the 
nature of the Universal Mind, and see things—of 
course, ‘through a glass darkly’—as It or He sees 
them. 

(2) But on the other hand, suppose we think that 
Kant was right—apart, I mean, from details in the way 
in which he worked out his views—in holding the 
conception of causation to be a purely anthropomorphic 
principle of interpretation. Causation then becomes a 
symbolic representation of something behind phenomena, 
of the real nature of which we cannot be aware. In that 
case the last thread has snapped between the conception 
of Mechanism as Science uses it and what we call a 
machine. Even the notion of activity has disappeared 
from it. It is a way of saying that a ‘working drawing’ 
of Reality may be made which, zf Matter, Force 
and Causation were what apparently they are not, 
would represent the way it works. In other words, the 


ae REALITY CHAP. I 


conception of mechanism is definitely misleading unless 
it is treated as a pure diagram; but, recognised for 
what it is, it remains a necessary instrument of 
scientific thought. 

To sum up. If we affirm the ultimate validity of the 
category of causation, we seem to land ourselves in some 
form of Philosophie Idealism. If we refuse to do so, we 
put the last nail in the coffin of mechanomorphic 
Materialism. 


RELATIVITY 


I am not sufficiently versed in the higher mathe- 
matics and in the theory of electro-magnetism to 
profess to understand the case for Ejinstein’s theory. 
Much less am I entitled to pronounce what bearing, if 
any, it has upon the question of Materialism. But 
persons who are better qualified than myself to judge, 
and who cannot be suspected of any theological bias, 
think that it has a bearing. 

Let Mr. Bertrand Russell speak: * 


The theory of relativity, by merging time into space-time, 
has damaged the traditional notion of substance more than all 
the arguments of the philosophers. Matter, for common-sense, 
is something which persists in time and moves in space. But 
for modern relativity-physics this view is no longer tenable. A 
piece of matter has become, not a persistent thing with varying 
states, but a system of inter-related events. The old solidity 
is gone, and with it the characteristics that, to the materialist, 
made matter seem more real than fleeting thoughts. 


'Tntroduction to new edition of Lange’s History of Materialism, 
p. 11. (Kegan Paul, 1925.) 


IT 


SCIENCE, ART AND RELIGION 


SCIENCE, ART AND RELIGION 
SYNOPSIS 


SCIENCE 


Pure Science conceives Reality in terms of Quantity. Quality (or 
Value) is the special province of Art and Religion. 

The recent revolution, led by eminent scientists, in accepted views 
as to the nature of scientific knowledge. Quotations to illustrate this. 
Scientific knowledge, it would appear, is a Representation of Reality 
which may be compared to a diagram. 

The main contention of this chapter is that Religion is similarly a 
Representation of Reality, only it is one comparable, not to a diagram, 
but to a picture. The religious apprehension of Reality may be likened 
to Turner’s picture, ‘Sunrise in Venice’, the scientific to a ground plan 
of the canals and streets. For comprehensive knowledge of Reality, 
Representations of both kinds are requisite. 


ArT 


Whatever else Art may be—and no general theory of Asthetics is 
here attempted—it is a method of externalising something of the inner 
quality of life. 

Two essential differences between Science and Art. 

(1) Science states; art suggests. 

(2) Science explains observed data by bringing individual cases 
under a general Jaw; Art reveals an inner spirit by embodying it in a con- 
crete instance. By thus making visible the invisible, Art may convey 
information; for an inner spirit once objectified can be used as a datum 
for a scientific purpose, but such use is alien to the artist’s own intention. 

Life is something which can only be known from within. But the 
knowledge of its inward quality derived from one’s own personal experi- 
ence can be enriched by various means. Of these means Art is among 
the most important. 

The apprehension of quality is an essential element in all conscious 
life. Two reflections suggest themselves. 

(1) Quality is nothing artificial, but an element in the totality of 
things which any theory of the Universe must seek to explain. 

(2) While Art objectifies life in its apprehension of esthetic value, 
Religion is concerned with moral value also. 


24 


RELIGION 


If Religion is to be accepted as a valid Representation of Reality in 
terms of quality, comparable to the Representation given by Science in 
terms of quantity, it must be shewn that a two-fold path to knowledge 
is necessitated by the constitution of the human goings Proof of this 
postponed to Chapter Ly: 

Religion zs the inner spirit of the religious man; and of this conduct 
is the primary objectification. But when we think of Religion as a 
Representation of Reality parallel to that given by Science, we must 
study its secondary objectifications, such as myth, creed and rite. 

We then notice that, while Religion is akin to Art in that it is con- 
cerned with Quality, it resembles Science (1) in its claim to represent 
Truth, (2) in conceiving the Universe as a consistent Whole. Mono- 
theism, the most mature type of Religion, makes the qualitative affirma- 
tion that the Whole is good. 


TRUTH 


Reality is too large and too rich for finite minds to grasp in its 
completeness. Truth, then, is the best attainable Representation of 
Reality in certain of its aspects. 
~ Quality can only be known by being felt; but by means of Art we 
can feel quality beyond the limits of our own experience. 

Religion, using methods of Art,—such as myth, drama, parable, 
hymn—‘represents’ Reality by making men feel the quality which it 
ascribes to It. 

Hence to test the ‘truth’ of any Religion we must cross-examine its 
myths, etc., and find their inner meaning before looking at the intel- 
lectual constructions of its theologians. 


ADDITIONAL NOTE 


CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER RELIGIONS 


25 


IT 
SCIENCH, ART AND RELIGION 


SCIENCE 


Aut things that can be measured, and all things, just so 
far as they can be measured, come within the purview 
of Science. The realm of Science is Quantity. Quality 
can be appraised, but it cannot be measured. ‘This 
holds, even though for practical purposes we may try 
to correlate our estimate of quality with some scale of 
quantity. One picture is not two and three-quarter 
times as beautiful as another, nor is one crime three 
and a half times as heinous as another, even if the price 
paid for two pictures, or the terms of imprisonment 
awarded for two crimes, may be in those proportions. 
Again, you can measure the chemical constituents of two 
wines, but not the corresponding flavours; you cannot 
measure the differences of quality in the notes of a har- 
monic scale, although a mathematical formula will exactly 
describe the relative lengths of the vibrating strings. 
The pure sciences, of which Physics and Chemistry 
are the type forms, conceive of Reality only in terms of 
quantity. But in Art and Religion we have activities 
of the human mind which appear to conceive no less 
exclusively in terms of quality. They weigh not, neither 
do they mete; they aim only at the recognition, the 
expression or the creation of Value. Further, the 
26 ; 


CHAP. II SCIENCE 27 


methods by which quality is apprehended, estimated or 
expressed are different in kind from those which are 
applicable to quantity. If provisionally we assume that 
quantity and quality are two diverse aspects of Reality, 
they cannot be known in the same way.’ 

There are, however, certain sciences primarily 
concerned with the phenomena of human activity, 
such as Psychology or History, which would stultify 
themselves if they kept strictly to the quantitative 
methods and mechanical concepts of pure science of 
which Physics is the type. Psychology and History, as I 
shall argue later (p. 103 ff.), are compelled to supplement 
and interpret the results so reached by a sympathetic 
appreciation of the qualitative character of the inner 
life of the objects which they study. They are successful 
in exact proportion as they know how to employ at the 
right time and in the right way, in addition to methods 
employed by pure science, a kind of imaginative insight 
into the finer nuances of character akin to that of a 
great novelist. That is to say, Psychology and History 
operate by a combination of the method of Science 
with the method of Art. These, then, should be styled 
‘mixed sciences’. They occupy a position intermediate 
between the ‘pure’ sciences of Physics and Chemistry * 
on the one side and Art and Religion on the other. 
I have mentioned these ‘mixed sciences’ because, as it 
will appear later, their existence has an important bearing 
on the provisional assumption which I am here making 
that quality as well as quantity is characteristic of 

1‘T venture to say that the division of the external world into a 
material world and a spiritual world is superficial, and that the deep line 
of cleavage is between the metrical and the non-metrical aspects of the 
world’ (A. S. Eddington, F.R.S., in Science, Religion and Belief. Ed. 
J. Needham. (Sheldon Press, 1925.) 


* On question whether the Biological Sciences are ‘pure’ sciences in 
this sense, see pp. 95-102. 


28 REALITY CTTAP. 


Reality itself. But for the rest of this chapter they 
may be ignored. 

An immense advance has been made during the last 
few years by a group of thinkers trained in pure science 
and mathematics towards a clearer understanding of the 
nature of scientific knowledge. The change of outlook 
may without exaggeration be styled revolutionary. 
Since, however, it is one for the exposition of which my 
personal competency might reasonably be called in 
question, I prefer to let experts in these fields of know!- 
edge speak for themselves. 


The doors through which Nature imposes her presence on 
us are the senses. ... Older physics was subdivided into 
mechanics, acoustics, optics and theory of heat. We see the 
connections with organs of sense—the perceptions of motion, 
impressions of sound, light and heat. Here the qualities of the 
(perceiving) subject are still decisive for the formation of con- 
ceptions. The development of the exact sciences leads along a 
definite path from this stage to a goal which, even if far from 
being attained, yet lies clearly exposed before us: it is that of 
creating a picture of Nature which, confined within no limits 
of possible perception or intuition, represents a pure structure 
of conception, conceived for the purpose of depicting the sum 
of all experiences uniformly and without inconsistencies. 

Nowadays mechanical force is an abstraction which has only 
its name in common with the subjective feeling of force. 
Mechanical mass is no longer an attribute of tangible bodies, but 
is also possessed by empty spaces filled only by ether radiation. 

Inaudible tones, invisible light, imperceptible heat, these 
constitute the world of physics—cold and dead for him who 
wishes to experience living Nature, to grasp its relationships as 
a harmony, to marvel at her greatness in reverential awe.* 


So the German mathematician and physicist Max 
Born. Similarly Mr. Eddington, Professor of Astronomy 


1 Hinstein’s Theory of Relativity, by Max Born (Prof. of Theoretical 
Physics, Gottingen). E. T. (Methuen, 1924), p. 2f. 


ui SCIENCE 29 


at Cambridge, in the essay already quoted (p. 27) in a 
footnote. 


Leaving out all esthetic, ethical, or spiritual aspects of 
our environment, we are faced with qualities such as massive- 
ness, substantiality, extension, duration, which are supposed 
to belong to the domain of physics. In a sense they do belong; 
but physics is not in a position to handle them directly. The 
essence of their nature is inscrutable; we may use mental pic- 
tures to aid calculations, but no image in the mind can be a 
replica of that which is not in the mind. And so in its actual 
procedure physics studies not these inscrutable qualities, but 
pointer-readings which we can observe. The readings, it is 
true, reflect the fluctuations of the world-qualities; but our 
exact knowledge is of the readings, not of the qualities. The 
former have as much resemblance to the latter as a telephone 
number has to a subscriber. 

Until recently physicists took it for granted that they had 
knowledge of the entities dealt with, which was of a more inti- 
mate character; and the difficulty which many find even now 
in accepting the theory of relativity arises from an unwilling- 
ness to give up these intuitions or traditions as to the intrinsic 
nature of space, time, matter and force, and substitute for 
them a knowledge expressible in terms of the readings of 
measuring instruments. In considering the relations of science 
and religion it is a very relevant fact that physics is now in 
course of abandoning all claim to a type of knowledge which it 
formerly asserted without hesitation. Moreover, these con- 
siderations indicate the limits to the sphere of exact science. 


The conclusion of the matter is summed up in popular 
language by Mr. Bertrand Russell: * 


What we know about the physical world, I repeat, is much 
more abstract than was formerly supposed. Between bodies 
there are occurrences, such as light-waves; of the laws of these 
occurrences we know something—just so much as can be 
expressed in mathematical formule—but of their nature we 
know nothing. . . . Wenaturally interpret the world pictorially ; 


* The A.B.C. of Relativity (Kegan Paul, 1925), p. 226 ff. 


30 REALITY CHAP. 


that is to say, we imagine that what goes on is more or less like 
whatwesee. But in fact this likeness can only extend to certain 
formal logical properties expressing structure, so that all we can 
know is certain general characteristics of its changes. Perhaps 
an illustration may make the matter clear. Between a piece of 
orchestral music as played, and the same piece of music as 
printed in the score, there is a certain resemblance, which may 
be described as a resemblance of structure. The resemblance is 
of such a sort that, when you know the rules, you can infer the 
music from the score or the score from the music. But suppose 
you had been stone-deaf from birth, but had lived among 
musical people. You could understand, if you had learned to 
speak and to do lip-reading, that the musical scores repre- 
sented something quite different from themselves in intrinsic 
quality, though similar in structure. The value of music would 
be completely unimaginable to you, but you could infer all its 
mathematical characteristics, since they are the same as those 
of the score. Now our knowledge of nature is something like 
this. We can read the scores, and infer just so much as our 
stone-deaf person could have inferred about music. But we 
have not the advantages which he derived from association 
with musical people. We cannot know whether the music rep- 
resented by the scores is beautiful or hideous. 


My own fundamental disagreement with Mr. Russell 
would lie in the contention that, although we may (to 
adopt his own illustration) be hard of hearing, we are not 
stone-deaf; and that therefore, more especially through 
Art and Religion at their greatest and best, we become 
capable of hearing the music and appreciating its value. 

To make my position quite clear, I will state it 
in another way. The main conclusion of the school of 
thought I have referred to may be summed up by 
saying that what Science gives us is a Representation 
of Ultimate Reality, and that this Representation is 
one that may be likened, not so much to a picture, as 
to a diagram. On that way of putting it, the position 
IT am maintaining is the counterpart of this conception. 


It SCIENCE 31 


I suggest that what Religion gives is also a Representa- 
tion of Ultimate Reality, but one that is of the nature 
not of a diagram but of a picture. 

If the case is so, it follows that Science and Religion 
each give a Representation which without the other is 
incomplete. An analogy will illustrate my meaning. 
I wish to explain something about Venice to a friend 
who has never been there, and there are readily accessible 
both the plan of the city in Baedeker’s guide and 
Turner’s famous picture. Which will be the most 
useful? It depends entirely upon the immediate purpose 
of our conversation. If my sole object is to show him 
the exact position of an hotel which I recommend, the 
plan is what I want, the picture is worthless. If I wish 
to prove that Venice is well worth a visit, or if my aim 
is to suggest to him an attitude of mind which will enable 
him to get the most profit from a visit, the picture is 
the thing. But if I want to convey to him the best 
idea I can of the place as a whole, I shall use both 
plan and picture. Just so, I shall endeavour to show, 
the no less contrasted Representations given by Science 
and Religion are both required for the fullest possible 
apprehension of Reality. 

It is, however, of little use to say that Science and 
Religion stand for two complementary, and not for 
two opposed, methods by which man apprehends—and 
thereby is enabled the better to adapt himself to—the 
nature of Reality, unless both the contrast and the 
mutual relation of these methods is made clear. This 
is a necessary preliminary to any real correlation of 
Science and Religion. ‘Towards such a clearing up issues 
the representatives of Science have made their con- 
tribution. ‘They have thought out and proclaimed to 
the world a new theory of the nature and limitations 


32 REATATY CHAP. 


of knowledge in the sphere of pure Science. It is time 
that the same thing should be attempted from the 
standpoint of Religion. To match the new philosophy 
of Science a new philosophy of Religion must be found. 
I claim no special competency to propound such a phil- 
osophy; what I think I do see is a line of next advance. 
About one thing, however, I feel clear. The point from 
which enquiry should set out is a consideration, not of 
esthetic theory in general, but of certain aspects, of the 
nature and function of Art. 


ART 

To the average Britisher the very word Art rings 
‘highbrow’; it never occurs to him that from it can 
be learnt anything touching the depths of Reality or 
Life. This, I believe, is mainly the fault of the people 
who talk and write about Art, in that they so often 
start off from arts like sculpture and painting, and not 
from those in which the esthetic genius of this country 
finds its most abundant and characteristic expression. 
These are—next after the plays of Shakespeare—the 
novel, the lyric and the jest. 

A good song and a really good joke may be perfect 
works of art. Tell the plain man this, and he will at 
once see that Life is in Art trying to bring into clear 
consciousness the interest it takes in itself. A work of 
art is the embodiment of a feeling, a mood, or a point 
of view not purely ethical or intellectual. It is thus an 
externalisation, in one or other of its aspects, of the 
inner quality of life. That a Scottish song-book is, as 
it were, a distillation of the spirit of Scotland, and is 
also a collection of sesthetic gems, no one would be 
disposed to deny. But there are certain points about 
the nature of Art which it is really easier to bring out 
if one takes one’s illustrations from the sphere of 


u ART 33 


humour, Among these points are two essential differ- 
ences between Science and Art which are vital to the 
argument of this chapter. 

(1) The method of Science is to state, of Art to sug- 
gest. The scientist confronts the intellect with definite 
facts and clear-cut theories—as definite and as clear as 
he can make them. The artist is not trying to com- 
municate facts or theories, but to elicit an appreciative 
spiritual response. If he is successful the response will 
qualitatively be that which he intends; according to 
that intention it may be instinct with merriment or 
sadness, mockery or awe. All of us at times try to 
make jokes; when they come off, we are all to that 
extent artists. That is why, in that sphere, we all 
know something of this peculiarity of Art. In illustration 
I quote a story which some one told me once. 

A magnificent individual sumptuously attired sol- 
emnly descends the steps of a London club, ignores with 
an Olympian aloofness the ‘Cab, Sir,’ which greets him 
from the kerb, and swings slowly down the street. ‘I 
say, Bill’, says the cabman to a friend, ‘Ever ’eard of 
Gawd?’ ‘Well, wot abart ’im? ‘That’s 71s brother 
Archibald’ ... Taken as statement, the last sentence 
is just nonsense; as suggestion, it is replete with 
meaning. 

As a further illustration—at the opposite end of the 
scale of feeling—I may quote from Macbeth’s soliloquy 
on the futility of existence. 


To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow, 
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 
To the last syllable of recorded time; 

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
The way to dusty death. 


How little is stated here, how much conveyed! 


34 REALITY CHAP. 


Once more; were the last words in St. John’s account 
of Judas leaving the Supper intended merely as a 
statement giving information about the time of day? 
‘He then having received the sop went immediately out; 
and 2t was night’. 

(2) Science explains; that is, it aims at understanc- 
ing phenomena by seeing them as particular cases of a 
general law. Art is not concerned with explanations; 
but it makes manifest the inner quality of life in 
some one special phase by embodying it in a concrete 
instance. Art is the apt externalisation of an inward 
spirit. In the attack at Cambrai in 1917 high hopes 
were entertained that, rightly used, a recent brilliant 
invention might end the war. The commander’s 
signal ran, ‘England expects that every tank will do 
its damn’dest’. It was believed that the destiny of 
Europe would that day, and by that corps, be decided. 
In our national history the classical expression of 
patriotism in its heroic mood is Nelson’s signal at 
Trafalgar; yet throughout the British Empire no one 
doubted that in a ribald parody, so signalled at such 
a moment, the spirit of England had found true 
expression. 

With knowledge in the scientific sense, Art has 
nothing to do whatever. Nor is it ever, I think, the 
intention of the artist, gua artist, to convey knowledge. 
as such—nevertheless he does so. For, whatever else 
Art is——and I am not going to betray myself into 
propounding a complete theory of Aisthetics in half a 
dozen pages,—it is certainly life becoming conscious of 
its own inner quality. Accordingly, from the work of 
Art in which this consciousness has found expression, 
a person other than the artist may derive information— 
as well, of course, as purely esthetic enjoyment. Thus 


II ART 30 


to a future historian the tank signal I have quoted 
will be invaluable evidence both as to the idiosyncrasy 
of the English national character—in no other country 
in Europe would such a signal have been even tolerated— 
and also as to the state of mind of the British Army at 
a particular date. Every work of art is, like that signal, 
the outward objectification of an invisible spirit; and 
just in so far as the invisible is thereby made visible, 
or a fleeting experience is made permanent, the work 
of art can be used as a datum for a scientific purpose— 
though such use is alien to the artist’s own intention. 
A professor writing a treatise on national characteristics 
might find in a Russian ballet some valuable material— 
but it is not to supply this that the dancers dance. 
Life—to anticipate a point I shall expand later on in 
this book (p. 99 ff.)—is something which I know from 
within. And in the last resort I can only know it from 
within. When I say that animals or other persons are 
alive, that is because from their movements, gestures, 
speech, etc., I infer there 1s a motive power behind those 
movements resembling that in myself which would in 
similar circumstances express itself in similar movements. 
My knowledge of the nature and inner quality of life and 
of its manifold potentialities is derived, in the first place, 
from my own personal interpretation of my own personal 
experience. But I should be in a poor way if I could 
never get outside this narrow circle. I am forced into 
some apprehension of a wider circle of experience by 
the fact that no small part of the concentrated experience 
of my race is embodied in the very language I must use, 
and in the institutions—family, city, school, ete——-which 
mould me from youth up. Further glimpses into the 
inner nature of life, other than my own, come from con- 
verse and contact with other mind in daily social inter- 


36 REALITY CHAP. 


course. Thus what a man knows of the inner quality of 
life depends primarily upon three things: first, the depth 
. and the range of his own personal experience; secondly, 
how far he has the imaginative sympathy to penetrate 
into the inner experience of others; thirdly, the extent 
to which he has reflected on the material so presented. 
Of these, personal experience is the first requisite, but 
alone it is not enough. For ‘most -beople’, it has been 
said, ‘are ignorant, in spite of experience’. Wisdom and 
insight come, not from the number of things done, or 
the poignancy of things felt, but from depth and quality 
of after-reflection on them." 

After this the great source of enrichment to individual 
personal experience is Art. In the drama, the novel 
and the lyric this function is self-evident. Obviously 
these great interpreters of human mood and character 
‘hold, as ’t were, the mirror up to nature’ and in objective 
form portray in full variety the inner quality of life. 
But the case is not otherwise with other arts. A Greek 
statue is not a replica of some featherless biped of Greek 
race; it is the expression in marble of a Greek ideal. A 
landscape is not a photographic reproduction of a scene 
in nature; it is also the embodiment of the impression 
made by that scene upon the artist’s mind; and its merit 
depends mainly on the value (judged by an esthetic 
standard) of that impression—in other words upon his 
quality of mind. Even in a portrait, where at first sight 
the alm in view might seem to be merely exact repro- 
duction of an original, it is still the impression made 
on the artist’s mind of the inner spirit of the sitter that 
matters most; if we say that the artist has ‘caught’ 


*Cf. R. L. Nettleship, Lectures on the Republic of Plato, p. 129: 
‘Genius is the power of getting knowledge with the least possible 
experience, and one of the greatest differences between men is in the 
amount of experience they need of anything in order to understand it’. 


Tl ART 37, 


the likeness, we mean that the picture embodies the 
impression made by the sitter’s personality upon a mind 
of insight delicate or profound. 

All Art is thus an objectification, qualitative in char- 
acter, of the inner spirit of man. But all Art is not 
equally significant. Much of course depends on the 
degree of mastery by the artist of the technique and 
media of representation. But besides this there are some 
activities in the human spirit which are qualitatively 
less important than others. From the point of view of 
technical perfection a novel of Jane Austen might per- 
haps be deemed superior to a tragedy of Shakespeare; 
they are not equally significant as embodiments of the 
depth and range of the human spirit. Again, from the 
purely technical point of view it would be hard to 
improve upon Sheridan’s drinking song, ‘Here’s to the 
maiden of bashful fifteen’; but we do not rank it with 
Milton’s sonnet On his Blindness—there is less behind 
it. Each perfectly reveals an experiencing spirit; but 
the experiences are not equally profound. 

I have harped upon the idea of quality—intention- 
ally. I have been leading up to the point that quality 
is something essentially bound up with life, or rather 
with conscious life. In the evolution of life, as soon as 
sensation emerges, quality begins to be discerned. To 
feel at all, is to feel liking or dislike. Very low in the 
scale of life the stage is reached when one morsel of food 
is absorbed with avidity, another rejected with distaste. 
At the advanced level of self-consciousness found in 
humanity there is still the same two-sided response: © 
this is good, that is bad. Note, however, that good and 
bad are adjectives that can equally well be applied to a 
drink, to a picture, to an action. Yet while so applying 
them, we recognise that within the idea of quality good 


38 REALITY CHAP. 


or bad there is a further differentiation, itself also quali- 
tative. An action is good morally, a picture esthetically, 
a drink sensuously. But if the qualitative character 
of these distinctions has been missed by some philoso- 
phers it is largely, I think, because those who have urged 
it have often failed to notice, or at least to emphasise, 
the fact that these distinctions are never absolute. A 
noble action has a certain esthetic, as well as a moral, 
quality—we call it ‘fine’; it also gives a certain pleasure 
in the doing, and this can not wholly be differentiated 
from sensuous pleasure. So, too, the appreciation of a 
good drink has an esthetic, as well as a purely sensuous, 
quality; * while the act of drinking—like all other acts 
—must necessarily have an ethical character determined 
by its context. 

This suggests two reflections, both of which will have 
some bearing on our philosophy of Religion. 

(1) Quality is something coterminous with Life, or 
at any rate with conscious life; indeed, consciousness 
is primarily the capacity to distinguish qualitatively. 
Accordingly quality must not be thought of as some- 
thing artificial or man-made; it 1s bound up with the 
intrinsic nature of life. Since then any one who seeks 
to frame a theory of the Universe must recognise life, 
he must also recognise quality, as an element in that 
totality of things which his system must attempt satis- 
factorily to explain. 

(2) Art is specifically the objectification and inter- 
pretation of quality in life, with the limitation that the 
quality it expresses is of the particular character we call 
esthetic. In so far as this limitation holds, Art is 
departmental; it does not profess to cover the whole of 


1 Cf. the praise of famous wines by Dr. Middleton in Meredith’s 
Egoist, chap. xx. 


IL RELIGION og 


life. And this limitation is for practical purposes valid 
even if we accept (as I personally am inclined to do) 
the view of those who maintain that no conscious activity 
is entirely without «esthetic quality (positive or nega- 
tive); and that therefore there is no side of life to which 
Art in the broadest sense is wholly extraneous. Religion 
differs from Art in that it is concerned with quality or 
‘value’ in its moral as well as in its esthetic aspect. 


RELIGION 


Scientific knowledge, we have seen, (p. 26), is a 
Representation * of Reality in terms of quantity. But 
if quality as well as quantity is an ultimate constituent 
of Reality, then Reality in Its qualitative aspect can 
only be known if this can be expressed in some 
adequate Representation. Any such qualitative repre- 
sentation must be capable of being correlated with the 
quantitative representation given by Science, but we 
should antecedently expect it to be of an entirely 
different order. The preceding examination of the way 
in which quality finds expression in Art would suggest 
that the methods of such representation will be analogous 
to those employed in Art. <A qualitative Representa- 
tion of Reality of this character is, I maintain, to be 
found in Religion. 

To assert that the Representations by Science and 
Reality are both valid, is in effect to assert that, to 
attain to a knowledge of Ultimate Reality, we must 
advance along more than one route. If that be so, it 
must be shown exactly how and why a two-fold path to 
knowledge is involved by the constitution of the human 
mind. This I shall attempt to do in a later chapter. 


* When my technical use of this word might not otherwise be 
obvious, I print a capital. 


40 REALITY CHAP. 


In the meantime it will clear the ground to consider 
certain other questions in regard to the nature and 
function of Religion. 

When we speak of Art, we usually think of actual 
works of art in which the spirit of the artist has found 
expression. When we speak of Science, we think in the 
first instance of a body of conclusions, rather than of 
the spirit of enquiry which inspired the search for them. 
But when we speak of Religion we think first of the 
inward spirit, and only in the second place of the creeds, 
the rites, the customs in which this spirit has objectified 
itself. In fact, the personality of the religious man 1s 
the only real expression of Religion." The higher the 
religion the more stress it lays on an inward orientation 
of life of which the supreme external test is found in 
conduct. For Christ the essence of religion is to love God 
and to love one’s neighbour; and of the genuineness of 
that love the test is, ‘by their fruits ye shall know them’. 
But when we compare (or contrast) Religion with either 
Art or Science considered as methods of representation, 
it is necessarily their objectifications only that we can 
compare. This puts Religion at a disadvantage. The 
objectifications of the artistic and scientific spirit con- 
sist in individual works of art or in clear-cut hypotheses 
which can be studied statically and in their totality; 
whereas conduct is an objectification of the quality of 
inner life which is every changing, and its true character 
cannot be judged except in relation to circumstances 
about which the observer can as a rule know little. 
It follows that myths, creeds and rites, ete., though 
not the most important objectifications of Religion, are 
from the nature of the case those on which, for the 


* Is this the meaning, or part of the meaning, of the words, ‘I am the 
way, the truth and the life’? 


i RELIGION 4] 


purposes of our present investigation, attention must 
primarily be fixed, for they alone profess to ‘represent’ 
Reality; and it is with Representations that we are 
compelled to deal. 

Considered, then, simply from the standpoint of 
representation, we note that, although in certain respects 
Religion is closer akin to Art than to Science, there are 
two points in which Religion more nearly resembles 
Science. 

(1) In the last resort, as we have seen, what the 
artist is trying to say is, This is how it strikes me. 
Religion says, This is how it ought to strike you, because 
this is how zt really is. In brief, Religion is like Science 
in that it professes to be concerned with Truth. 

This distinction, once made, must not be pressed too 
far. Shakespeare does not ask us to believe that Puck 
and Ariel ever existed; to him they are airy nothings 
to which his eye in a fine frenzy rolling has given a local 
habitation and a name. But Shakespeare would have 
had a poor opinion of any one who said that he saw in 
them mere nothingness. Up to a point the artist also 
says, It ought to strike you so. He feels instinctively 
that, though the form in which he has expressed himself 
is purely fanciful and individual to himself, the inner 
quality of spirit which this form objectifies is something 
which all men ought to recognise; that, in a sense, it is 
true. But Art, while insisting that its values are real, 
does not explicitly raise the question of truth; it does 
not profess to be a ‘representation’ of Reality, in the 
same sense as do Science or Religion. 

(2) Art individualises, it deals only with selected 
objects—a mood, a character, a scene, a single story. 
Everything in the Universe except the one thing (or the 
series of things) on which for the time being it con- 


42 REALITY CHAP. 


centrates attention is rigidly excluded from its view. 
In exact proportion to its esthetic perfection, everything 
that is included in the work of art is unified into a single 
system. A work of art is a universe in itself. The 
artist, therefore, is quite indifferent to any conflict or 
inconsistency between the representations given in two- 
different works of art. He may even glory in it; as 
Milton did when he wrote, confessedly as twin poems, 
L’ Allegro and Jl Penseroso, in each of which the mood 
of the moment is expressed as if it were the one and 
only valid philosophy of life. 

Religion, like Science, conceives of the Universe as a 
consistent whole. Where Religion is monotheistic, this 
is obvious; and until Religion has become such, it has 
not yet realised its true nature. For Polytheism, I should 
maintain, is a stage of human thought when Religion 
is not yet sufficiently evolved to be clearly distinguish- 
able from Art and Science. An example will make this 
clear. The goddess Aphrodite is an amalgam of three 
quite different things. (a) She is an externalisation in 
a concretely conceived character of a certain inner qual- 
ity in life and, in so far as she is that, is an artistic 
creatlon—comparable to Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, only 
that the goddess is the product of the artistry of the race, 
not of a single poet. (6) But she is also a scientific 
hypothesis; for she is regarded as an externally operating 
cause, of a quasi-scientific order,—as the cause, namely, 
of which sexual excitation is the effect, in much the same 
way as anesthesia is the effect caused by the inhaling of 
a dentist’s gas. (c) Lastly, just because Aphrodite was 
thought of, not as a merely artistic creation like Cleo- 
patra, but explicitly as a particularised expression of 
supra-mundane Reality, she could be the object of a 
regard which is specifically religious in its nature. 


i TRUTH 43 


Moreover Polytheism is rarely, if ever, complete; 
behind the many there is also the one. Thus in India 
(a land where the phenomena of Religion are always 
of special significance to the student) the conception of 
Brahma—the Ultimate One of whom even the high gods 
like Vishnu and Shiva are just partial manifestations— 
is deeply rooted in popular religion as well as in philos- 
ophy. And even in Greece the Pantheon was not a 
pandemonium; it was an organised system unified, on 
the one hand by the supremacy of Zeus, on the other 
by the law of an impersonal Fate by which gods as well 
as men were bound. 

Monotheism, at any rate, I will take leave to treat as 
the only form which Religion assumes in the most mature 
stage of its development. And Monotheism has always 
affirmed that in the last resort the Universe is somehow 
good. It has made the great assertion that quality is 
an integral element in Ultimate Reality. That is the 
point of the iteration in the Hebrew legend, ‘God saw 
that it was good’. 

- Religion, in a word, claims to be knowledge of truth; 

but the truth about which it claims to be informed is 
primarily the quality of Reality. Religion, then, so far 
as it recks only of quality, is akin to Art; but so far as 
its assertions are about the Whole, it is allied to Science. 


TRUTH 

The assertion that the Whole is in the last resort 
good, is one of which the exact meaning will obviously 
depend on what we mean by ‘good’. That is a subject 
on which Nietzsche and Christ have expressed different 
views; and even within a much narrower range of 
difference, the word ‘good’ is still ambiguous. Never- 
theless the assertion that the Whole has a quality which 


{-t REALITY CHAP. 


can be described by the word ‘good’, in some possible 
sense of that adjective, is one that has a meaning. It 
is a statement that must be either true or false. But 
its truth or falsehood cannot be ascertained in the same 
way as the truth or falsehood of a statement in Chem- 
istry or Physics. At once we:are compelled to face the 
fact that the meaning of the word ‘truth’ is not so simple 
as would at first sight appear. As Prof. 8. Alexander 
puts it: * 


Truth and reality are not identical conceptions. Truth is 
reality possessed by mind. .. . For truth is not reality itself, 
but the reality as the investigator possesses it. 


Reality as a whole is not only too large, but also too 
rich, a thing for our finite minds to apprehend in Its 
completeness. What we can do, is to isolate some 
definite part and frame a mental picture of that; or 
we can try to get a kind of bird’s-eye view of the Whole 
as seen from some particular aspect. When we say of 
a particular mental picture or ‘representation’ that it 
is true, we do not mean that it provides an exhaustive 
account of Reality, but merely one that is as correct 
and as adequate as it is possible to attain by the 
particular method used. 

A couple of illustrations may serve to make this 
clear. I cannot take in England as a whole, but, if I 
am on a motor tour, I can get maps which will show me 
every road and from which I can measure the distance 
between any two villages with the utmost nicety. The 
maps form a valid, and for certain purposes an adequate, 
representation of England. Everything they tell is true 
—hbut there is a good deal about England left untold. 
Again, the number of persons I can know, or could even 


"Journal of Philosophical Studies, January 1926, pp. 12, 16. 


i TRUTH 45 
see at one time, is very limited; but I can get statistical 
tables from which I can see in a few minutes how many 
persons in this island are married, are Roman Catholics, 
pay income tax or are over 45. But figures and per- 
sonalities, though co-extensive, are not co-equal. Statis- 
tics may be an accurate representation, but they are 
not an equivalent, of men. Just so, our knowledge 
of the Totality of Things must be of the nature, not 
of an equivalency, but of a Representation selective in 
character. 

Truth, then, we must define as that Representation 
which we have reason to believe is the best attainable 
by the human mind in regard to the particular aspect 
of Reality with which it proposes to deal. Science is 
such a Representation of Reality in terms of quantity, 
and every advance in Science consists in perfecting its 
representation in those terms. But, if we have any 
reason to suspect that quality is also a characteristic 
of Reality, we must obviously look elsewhere for a 
Representation of this aspect. We shall in no way 
disparage Science because quality is excluded from its 
purview; any more than we decry an ordnance map 
because it can give us no idea of the view from Richmond 
Hill. But we shall try to supplement the truth which 
Science gives us by looking round for some other method 
of representation which by its own nature is capable of 
representing quality. 

Now quality can only be made known by imparting 
some experience of it. Sweetness would mean nothing 
to one who had tasted nothing sweet, nor panic to 
one who had never experienced fear. But, as we have 
already seen, Art is par excellence the method by which 
we are made to feel quality beyond the limits of our 
own experience, by entering into an experience finer, 


46 REALITY CHAP. 


deeper or wider than our own. It would seem, then, that 
any Representation of Reality which is to bring home 
to us Its quality must have some of the characteristics 
of a work of art. It must suggest what cannot be stated, 
and it must have the power to elicit an appreciative 
response of a qualitative character. In fact, to return 
to an earlier illustration, it must make us react to 
Reality in the way that we react to Turner’s picture 
of Venice and not in the way that we do to Baedeker’s 
plan. 

It is not surprising, then, to find that Religion in 
the past has had recourse to myth, ritual (which is a 
form of drama), hymn, parable, epigram and paradox 
—all of them methods of Art. The supreme literary 
quality, the essentially poetical form—so often remarked 
upon—of the utterances of the Hebrew Prophets and 
of the words of Jesus is thus seen to be, not a fortunate 
accident, but a necessity of the case. If Reality has 
a qualitative aspect, then a cold, abstract, ‘businesslike’ 
representation, of the kind employed by Science, would 
simply fail to represent it. The only kind of representa- 
tion that can convey quality is one which somehow 
manages to cause us to have an inward experience 
which is an appropriate reaction to the quality repre- 
sented. 

In the case of a religious rite this is self-evident. 
When Christ, on the night that He was betrayed, brake 
the bread and blessed the cup, He did something of which 
the significance lies not in the bare action but in the 
meaning it suggests. And in spite of the age-long efforts 
of theologians to desiccate that meaning by intellectual- 
ised definition, the rite, wherever it is valued, is valued 
for a dynamic quality that cannot be defined. 

The same principle holds good in regard to every 


1 TRUTH 47 


religious representation, even if of a didactic character. 
These will fail to ‘represent’ unless they be such as to 
elicit the appropriate response in active feeling. Thus— 
on the assumption that love is a quality inherent in 
Reality—the Parable of the Prodigal Son is a true, 
because a dynamic, representation. But a formal list 
of the attributes of God, or a series of theological 
definitions, like those in the XXXIX Articles, is a 
representation of a different order; these may con- 
ceivably be good philosophy, they are certaintly not 
good religion. It was a penetrating observation of 
Thomas Arnold that the Nicene Creed should be 
regarded, like the Te Deum, as a hymn of praise. 
Religion, from the nature of the case, can only find an 
adequate representation by methods akin to those used 
by the Artist and the Poet. 

The grand error implicit in most apologetic literature 
is to treat Religion, and the ‘evidences’ for it, as if it 
were a branch of Science. A religion is true if, and in 
proportion as, the quality which it expresses is actually 
existent in, and characteristic of, Reality. It follows 
that to test the element of truth in any religion we 
must direct our attention first of all, not to the intel- 
. lectual constructions of the theologian, but to myth and 
rite, to hymn and prayer, to parable and proverb, to 
the mystic’s meditation and the prophet’s trumpet call. 


ADDITIONAL NOTE 
CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER RELIGIONS 


‘Enviest thou for my sake,’ said Moses to one who told him 
that there were some beside himself who prophesied, ‘Would 
God that all the Lord’s people were prophets’! That surely is 
the spirit in which Christ would have us approach other 


48 REALITY CHAP. II 


religious leaders of mankind. In Mohammed’s zeal for the 
One God we should note the spirit and power (as well as some 
of the limitations) of an Elijah; in the concentration of Con- 
fucius on a code of noble conduct we should approve another 
Moses—and it was to fulfil, not to destroy, the law and the 
prophets that Christ came. In the unnamed author of the 
Gita, the flower of Hindu devotion, we may see one who had 
chosen that better path for which once He commended Mary. 
And in the Buddha we must salute him who, giving the first 
place to love both in word and deed, might have reached the 
summit of inspiration, but for that ‘nay-saying’ which deems 
life itself an evil. 

To the philosopher, however (or to the historian), perhaps 
the most remarkable feature about Christianity is its central 
position as a kind of synthesis of all the Higher Religions. 
Intellectually, its theistic conception of God comprehends the 
deism of the Mohammedan and the pantheism of the Hindu; 
emotionally, it fuses the disciplined restraint of Confucius with 
the fervour of Indian bhaktt; ethically, it stands as the climax 
(cf. p. 207) which unifies developments and tendencies which 
elsewhere only partially achieve maturity. Add to this the 
fact (which I elaborate in the next chapter) that it is the one 
religion which has really ‘faced up to’ the problem of evil, and 
we see that every philosopher must start off with a consid- 
eration of Christianity as being, as it were, the ‘type-form’ of 
Religion. 

If a committee of students of Comparative Religion had 
set to work to compile a system, carefully selecting the best 
elements in each of the great religions, they might have 
reached something very like Christianity. But that was not 
the way it came. It was flashed upon the world as a Vision; 
and its synthetic unity is not that of a well-drawn committee 
report, but that of a work of art; and, like a medieval 
cathedral, it is the objectivication of corporate, as well as of 
individual, ‘intuition.’ A study, then, of the psychological 
conditions (cf. Appendix I.) of ‘intuitiqn’ or ‘inspiration’ will 
be an essential part of any attempt to determine its validity. 


Tit 


AN ANCIENT STORY 


49 


AN ANCIENT STORY 
SYNOPSIS 


Pro NOBIS CRUCIFIXUS 


In the Creed we find a story in which most of the events, though in 
form historical, are evidently symbolic. Plato would have seen in it one 
of those ‘myths’ to which he resorted when he felt that conceptual 
thinking had reached its furthest limit. 

But to call this story a myth, in the ordinary use of the word, would 
be misleading, for three reasons: 

(1) Christ is not a figure of mythology, but a character in history. 

(2) The factual element in the Crucifixion is what gives the story its 
dynamic significance. 

(3) In spiritual profundity the story is on quite a different level to 
the myths familiar to students of Comparative Religion. It is the 
supreme interpretation of the fact of Pain. 


Tue Prosuem or Evin 


Wherever there is life, there is Pain; where man is, there is also Sin. 
Evil, in this double aspect, constitutes a problem which is the touchstone 
of philosophy and religion alike. The two classical attempts to solve it 
are those worked out by the Indian and the Jew. 

The Indian doctrine of Karma. Its attractiveness and its weakness. 
Its unfortunate influence on the genius of the Buddha. 

The Hebrew quest, continued over many centuries, issued in a series 
of solutions, each intended to replace one which had satisfied a previous 
generation. 

Historical circumstances compelled the Jew to ‘specialise’ in the 
problem of evil. A climax was reached when the disciples of Jesus were 
confronted with the spectacle of the Crucifixion—the ideally good man 
brought by His devotion to God’s service to an ideally bad end. Reflec- 
tion on the Cross led to a new and positive conception of the function 
of pain, involving the defeat of evil. ‘Christianity thus gave to souls 
the faith and strength to grasp life’s nettle’. 


Beronp PuILosopHy 


Religion can only help those who believe it true. Truth means 
adequacy in representation. ‘To test such adequacy we must ask: 

(1) Is the Representation congruous with the facts of History and 
Science? This question is dealt with in Chapters IV.-VITI. 


50 


(2) Has it that dynamic qualitative character which assists men to 
defeat evil? This is dealt with in Chapters VIIT. and IX. 

Criticism of Benedetto Croce’s view that Religion is myth, and that 
myth is merely philosophy in an elementary stage. 

(1) Just as poetry can express what prose cannot, so Religion has 
something to communicate which cannot be expressed in purely con- 
ceptual terms. 

(2) The story does not merely present an idea about the nature of 
Reality ; it elicits a reaction in feeling and will which—assuming the idea 
to be correct—is an appropriate reaction. It is not enough that an idea 
(about God) should be true; it must also inspire to action. 

The question, What quality has Reality? is one to which everyday 
life compels us to make some answer—by deed if not by word. The 
search for the right answer is therefore worth the trouble. 

But must not an answer given nearly two thousand years ago be out- 
of-date? Great art never grows obsolete, and Religion may here, as in 
other ways, be closer akin to Art than to Science; and since the riddle 
of the Universe is not yet solved, this ancient answer must at least be 
studied. 


&1 


Ill 
AN ANCIENT STORY 


PRO NOBIS CRUCIFIXUS 


THERE is an ancient story—is it a parable, or some- 
thing more?—which has a strangely moving power. First 
of all the scene is set in Heaven, before all worlds; it 
changes for a while to earth, under Pontius Pilate; then 
_we are back in Heaven till the final End of things. Very 
God of very God, for us men and for our salvation, so 
the story runs, came down from Heaven, was incarnate 
of the Virgin and was made man; crucified also for us, 
He rose again, ascended into Heaven, sitteth on the right 
hand of the Father, and shall come again with glory to 
judge both quick and dead. 

In such a story Plato would have seen one of those 
myths to which he himself would often have recourse 
when, at the end of a long and arduous quest for truth, 
he felt that the pure intellect had shot its bolt but 
something yet remained unsaid. And since Philosophy, 
even when it is protesting against the unreality of 
abstractions, is apt to be itself abstract, while Art is 
vivid and concrete, Plato, I hold, did not cease to be 
a thinker, rather he showed his greatness as a thinker, 
when, at the point where abstract ratiocination could go 
no further, he fell back on Myth. 

Unfortunately for our present purpose the word 
‘myth’ has been fatally injured by the foolish people 

52 


CHAP. III AN ANCIENT STORY od 


who talk of the ‘Christ-myth’, with the implication 
that Jesus either never lived or that we know next to 
nothing of Him. These ought not to be taken seriously. 
Some of them, never having given real study to the sub- 
ject (or lacking the equipment to do so if they would), 
speak from second-hand or superficial knowledge; others 
are of that class—unfortunately not a small one—who 
feed an unconscious egoism by championing some ingeni- 
ous paradox. Competent scholars, here and in Germany, 
have been at the pains to publish refutations of their 
arguments; but, like those who maintain that Shake- 
speare was Bacon, or that the British are the Lost Tribes, 
they are impervious to refutation. My own view is 
summarised (p. 180 ff.) below. 

Were it not for these and other similar associations, 
the word ‘myth’ might appropriately be used to describe 
a series of statements, in form historical, most of which 
are manifestly of a purely symbolic character. Heaven 
is not a place whence the Son of God could ‘come 
down’, or whither He could ‘ascend’; God cannot be 
thought of as seated on one throne with another ‘on 
his right-hand’ side. Even more obviously symbolic is 
the title ‘Son of God.’ Indeed the Nicene Creed was 
expressly framed to repudiate the Arian contention that 
the ‘begetting’ of the Son was a literal generation which 
took place in time. There are theologians who bid us 
analyse the story into elements that are symbolic and 
elements that are historical. By such analysis we miss 
its point. It is of the story as a whole, not of little 
bits of it, that we ask, Is it true? But if we ask that 
question, the truth we are thinking of is a larger truth 
than that of history. Crucified under Pontius Pilate’ 
is indubitably historical, but taken by itself it is just a 
ghastly fact. Prefaced by the words, ‘who for us men 


54 REALITY CHAP. 


and for our salvation came down from Heaven’, it is 
transmuted; it becomes the supreme expression of the 
love of God for man. Ask whether this is true, and you 
have left history far behind—and you have outsoared 
philosophy as well. 

But there is a further reason why, even though a 
better word is hard to find, I hesitate to give to such a 
story the title ‘myth’. There is one respect, and that 
quite vital, in which among the world’s many myths 
it stands apart. Its core is a historic fact—the gaunt 
reality of Jesus crucified. In other myths there may be 
a historic nucleus, but it is never the historical element 
in them that is significant. In this case it is the actual 
death of Jesus, coming as the climax of the actual life He 
lived, which gives its meaning to the story. Pose the 
question, How far is this story, if considered as a ‘repre- 
sentation’ of Ultimate Reality in Its qualitative aspect, 
an adequate expression of the quality actually inherent 
therein—and at once the factual character of its historic 
core is seen to be essential. The quality of Reality may 
be expressed in a construction of the imagination; but 
in what has in fact happened we have confidence that 
the expression is authentic. For our present investiga- 
tion, however, only the broad significance of the facts 
is important; it matters not at all whether Christ’s 
public ministry lasted one year or three, whether the 
correct date of the crucifixion is a.p. 30 or 33. It does 
matter that He was crucified. 

But what matters most of all is whether the signifi- 
cance attached to this event in religious tradition is a 
valid interpretation of the quality of Reality. And the 
evidence by which this can be determined must be 
sought, not in ancient documents, but in a consideration, 
such as will be attempted in the following chapters, of 
the facts of Science and the experience of life. 


ul AN ANCIENT STORY 55 


Modern Psychology has done much to explore the 
suggestion that folk-tale and myth represent, as it were, 
race-dreams. ‘They express in symbolic and dramatic 
form the hopes, fears, and passions which lie deep down 
in the unconscious mind of the community. At times 
they rise to a level which makes them a kind of folk- 
philosophy.’ 

Of this character are many of the myths of Greek 
and Indian Religion, which obviously embody the 
intuitions of a race. For, though a myth or folk-tale 
may originally be the work of an individual, its survival 
and the actual form in which it has been preserved are 
due to the communal instinct which it expresses. But, 
though of immense interest from the historical and 
psychological point of view, the religious myths of India 
and Greece are of little value in the search for Ultimate 
Reality. This observation I may confirm by a quotation 
from that curious observer Count Hermann Keyserling.’ 


The mental outlook of the West was too scientific, even 
during the Middle Ages, to express irrational forces perfectly. 


* The exploitation in psychological theory of the myths of Oedipus, 
Electra and Narcissus, familiar as it is in popular talk, has a technical 
significance the exact meaning of which cannot be easily appreciated 
without considerable study of the subject. But the meaning and the 
appeal of a story like that of Cinderella is plain to all—it is the typical 
day-dream of the neglected and oppressed. It is an objectification in 
symbolic form of the consolation framed by hope for an inferiority felt 
in the depths of the soul. But in the series, dream, day-dream, folk- 
myth and conscious work of art, no hard-and-fast line can be drawn. 
Each passes into the other by imperceptible gradations. All emerge from 
the depths of the sub-conscious, and, in all, feeling-tone and quality 
predominate; only in the above series the element of intellectualisation 
and consciously achieved coherence, which in the work of art is essential, 
comes more and more into evidence. But even in dreams intellectuali- 
sation is present; and it is a great mistake to suppose that the only 
problems with which the dream-life deals are at the level of conflicts of 
sex or fear. The dream sometimes (cf. Appendix I, Dream Psychology 
and the Mystic Vision), and still oftener the myth, deals with problems 
of the same kind as those which exercise the Tragic Poet or the Philoso- 


her. 
ae The Travel Diary of a Philosopher, ©. T., p. 96. (Jonathan Cape, 
1925.) 


56 REALITY CHAP. 


But this is just what the Hindu succeeded in doing. The figures 
in the Indian Pantheon, in so far as they embody primary forces, 
are so convincing that I am inclined to believe the seer who 
told me once that they were the true likenesses of divine reality. 
... The particular elementary instincts are . . . condensed 
into so much substance, and they grow into beings of such 
terrific power, that it is not surprising if many among us still 
believe to-day that they are essentially profound. It is in this 
sense that the Indian Pantheon, although a superficial product, 
yet possesses profundity. It is so tense and exhaustive an 
expression of the superficial in man and nature, as could never 
have been discovered by a profounder set of human beings. 


The product of an early period in national develop- 
ment, the myths of India and Greece represent race 
experience and race reflection at a very primitive stage. 
And although with the advance towards higher civilisa- 
tion their crudities have received some castigation, 
and their substance has been enriched or its expression 
refined, they are only capable of expressing a very ele- 
mentary experience of life. That is why, both in India 
and Greece, the religious quest found its highest expres- 
sion in philosophy rather than in myth. 

Exactly the reverse holds good of the Christian 
story, even if you like to take it simply as a myth. 
This represents, not early beginnings, but the climax of 
highest development in Hebrew religion; it reflects, not 
the adolescence, but the maturity of a national soul— 
and that the soul of a people which for a thousand years 
had been concentrated on the religious quest. Even if 
we regard it merely as a projection, an objectification in 
mythical symbol of the depths of a racial soul, it would 
yet stand to the myths of Greece or India as a drama. to 
a dream. It is the one sublime interpretation of the fact 
of Pain. 


Til AN ANCIENT STORY 57 


Toe PRoBLEM or EVIL 


Pain is the fundamental fact in life. In the evolution 
of living organisms the capacity for pain, we are told, 
develops earlier than that for pleasure.’ The pain of 
hunger precedes the satisfaction of repletion, and in the 
animal kingdom it is at least probable that, of the two, 
the pain is the more acute. Freud, regarding sex as the 
source of pleasure in its intensest form, feels justified 
in using the word ‘sexual’ as the generalised description 
of pleasurable sensation of any kind. But here, too, 
at the animal level, one is inclined to suspect that the 
relief of pain, quite as much, if not more than, the 
achievement of pleasure, is the motivation of this 
instinct. Nor is it altogether otherwise even in the sub- 
limated form of human courtship. It is significant that 
in Spanish the phrase for a proposal is decir su dolor, to 
tell one’s woe. And at a far deeper level of experience 
than this, the ache, the disillusionment and the despair of 
love have ever been known as bedfellows of its joy. 


If love should count you worthy, and should deign 
One day to seek your door and be your guest, 
Pause! ere you draw the bolt and bid him rest, 

If in your old content you would remain; 

For not alone he enters; in his train 
Are angels of the mist, the lonely guest 
Dreams of the unfulfilled and unpossessed, 

And sorrow, and Life’s immemorial pain. 

He wakes desires you never may forget,. 

He shows you stars you never saw before, 
He makes you share with him, for evermore, 

The burden of the world’s divine regret. 

How wise you were to open not! and yet, 

How poor if you should turn him from the door! ” 

* “Pain centres seem to lie lower (sc. in the brain structure) than 
pleasure centres. No region of the cortex cerebri has been assigned to 
pain. Such negative evidence gives perhaps extraneous interest to the 
ancient view ... that pleasure is absence of pain” (C. S. Sherington, 
The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, p. 255. (Yale University 
Press, 1920.) 


*S. R. Lysaght, Poems of the Unknown Way; quoted with the kind 
permission of Messrs. Macmillan and Co. 


58 REALITY CHAP. 


Wherever life is, there is Pain. But once man with 
his gift of free choice has appeared, and whenever man 
is on the stage, then evil stalks in yet another guise— 
debasing lust, conscious injustice, deliberate cruelty, all 
the foulness, meanness, egoism, which of old was summed 
up in the one word—Sin. 

For the polytheist the existence of evil is not a 
problem. He feels the smart of it; but where gods are 
many, with diverse interests and of characters none too 
high, he would be surprised if the world they ruled were 
not full of caprice. To the materialist, also, there is no 
problem; if the Universe is the product of blind chance 
it cannot be expected to function ethically. But to the 
monotheist, or to any philosopher to whom the ration- 
ality of the Universe means more than a mere mathe- 
matical self-consistency, evil presents a problem so 
urgent that according to the profundity of the solution 
which it offers, every religion and every philosophy 
must finally be judged.’ 

The fundamental question raised in this volume is 
whether or no Religion is or can be a valid Representa- 
tion of Reality on the side of quality. Clearly, then, of 
all the religions of mankind—whatever other merits 
they may have—those only claim our notice here in 
which the problem of evil is recognised as central. This 


1 In discussions of this subject, the conventional procedure is to begin 
by distinguishing the problem of pain from the problem of sin, with the 
implication that, of the two, sin is the more perplexing. I am not so 
sure. Pain is coterminous with life, conscious wrong-doing is confined to 
man; and were it not that the wrong that one man does is so frequently 
paid for by the agonies of others, the problem of evil would—to most of 
us, at any rate—assume a different aspect. Again, to the problem of sin 
a solution theoretically satisfactory lies close at hand. Neither virtue 
nor vice has any meaning unless the will is in some sense free, for an 
automaton can be neither good nor evil. Free will, then, is a necessary 
condition of goodness; but that same freedom of choice which makes 
goodness possible must leave open the possibility of the choice of evil. 
An abstract argument like this does not satisfy the heart, but at least. 
it estops the plea as it is stated by the head. I know of no logic that 
can so nimbly dodge the fact of pain. 


I AN ANCIENT STORY 59 


fact once observed, our investigation is enormously 
simplified; for the religions of which this holds good 
are few. 

It was in India first that a solution of the problem of 
evil was thought out on the grand seale. Unfortunately 
the solution reached was reached too soon; it was too 
neat and too complete. A thousand years and more 
before Christ, India had worked out the ‘doctrine of 
Karma. In this scheme all suffering, wheresoever seen 
and howsoever caused, is punishment for sins committed 
by the sufferer in a previous incarnation; and every sin 
committed now will similarly, in a subsequent reincarna- 
tion, meet its exact due. The equation between sin and 
suffering is perfect; guilt and Sees are: exactly 
balanced. 

At first blush this equation is the strong point of the 
theory. It enables man to assert that the structure of 
the Universe is just; * and this possibility is one that 
appeals to the mind of the West quite as much as to 
that of the East.. But deeper reflection stirs a doubt, 
Is Justice the supreme good? The Law-court, like the 
steam-engine, 1s an invention of man, and to me, at any 
rate, the theologian who envisages the Power behind the 
Universe as an infinite Lord Chief Justice seems to be 
suilty of an anthropomorphism as naive as that of the 
materialist who thinks of It as an infinite Machine. 
Justice is a concept quite as necessary. to Jurisprudence 
as that of mechanism is to Science; but the attempt to 
apply either of them to the Universe, in anything like 
their original sense, is seriously misleading—quite as 

* Yet the moralist may reasonably urge that punishment fails to 
attain its object unless the offender is conscious that, and exactly for 
what, he is being punished at the time when the punishment is 
inflicted. Again, the philanthropist may urge that the theory that all 


suffering is richly deserved is likely to damp man’s ardour in the effort 
to relieve it. 


60 REALITY CHAP. 


much in the case of Justice (cf. p. 228 ff.) as we have 
already found it to be in the case of Mechanism. 

In the way of life short cuts are perilous. The 
religious quest of India was side-tracked by the mechani- 
cal perfection with which the doctrine of Karma solved 
the problem of evil in terms of legal justice. A problem 
which seems completely solved causes no more per- 
plexity; but when men cease to question they cease to 
find fresh light. It was peculiarly unfortunate that the 
Buddha, the greatest soul in Indian history—perhaps 
the second greatest in the history of religion—accepted 
the doctrine of Karma with only minor modifications. 
For his acceptance of this doctrine meant that the prob- 
lem of the nature and the end of Life was for him 
artificially simplified. By accepting the dogma that all 
pain in this life is punishment for sin in some previous 
existence—reckoned according to a kind of debtor and 
creditor account in which pain is always the negative 
equivalent in suffering of a positive act of wrong—he had 
ruled out in advance the possibility of a philosophy in 
which the fact of pain can have positive significance by 
becoming a constituent element in the quality of a life 
lived. If pain is never anything but a paying of past 
debts and never has a forward look, then it follows that 
life, as the Buddha held, is a thing from which release 
is to be sought. To kill desire becomes the message of 
deliverance. 

The Hebrew, like the Indian, tried hard to conceive 
the Universe as just. And at that early stage of social 
development at which individuality is still overshadowed 
by tribal consciousness, it was not impossible to do so. 
The observation that the sins of parents are visited upon 
the children, or those of the monarch on his people, has 
a rough-and-ready correspondence with the facts of life. 


Ii AN ANCIENT STORY 61 


Children certainly do suffer for what their parents, 
nations for what their rulers, do amiss. But is this Just? 
That question is bound to be asked as soon as men reach 
the stage when the individual, rather than the group, is 
seen as the unit of moral responsibility; and by the time 
of the Babylonian exile the Jew had reached this stage. 


In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have 
eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. 
But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that 
eateth the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.* 


Then Ezekiel thunders out the famous chapter which 
proclaims that in the award of prosperity and adversity 
to the individual God 7s strictly just. 


The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear 
the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the 
iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be 
upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.’ 


But the doctrine that in this world the individual 
gets exactly his deserts is not one which experience 
bears out. The book of Job was written to point this 
out. And so far as this life is concerned Job is right; 
the hypothesis of the rule of justice simply will not fit 
the facts. It was a greater than Job that said, “Those 
eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew 
them, think ye that they were sinners above all that 
dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you nay’; and, again, ‘He 
maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and 
sendeth rain on the just and the unjust’. The purpose 
of the Universe, if such there be. is something which 
soars above mere justice.” 

* Jeremiah xxxi. 29 ff. 

* Ezekiel xviii. 20. 


* Cf. the very original and important essay, ‘Beyond Justice’, in Lily 
Dougall’s God’s Way with Man. (Student Christian Movement, 1923.) 


62 REALITY CHAP. 


No premature solution of the mystery of evil had 
barred the Jew from continuing to ponder on the prob- 
lem. And neither the character nor the circumstances 
of the race had allowed it to remain unpondered. | 

(1) Some time before the Babylonian exile a line of 
prophets had proclaimed a sublimely ethical monotheism. 
And, as we have already seen, the problem of evil 
becomes acute in exact proportion as man rises to the 
belief that the All is ordered by a single Will and that 
that Will is good. 

(2) This people, devoted as they were to a higher 
religion and a nobler ethic, nevertheless, century after 
century, were helplessly subjected to great empires whose 
ideals and whose gods were cruel and impure. So cir- 
cumstanced they could never leave off asking, Why? 

(8) With the complete destruction of the Hebrew 
state and of the old national life, there arose a confident 
expectation of a glorious national restoration, the so- 
called Messianic hope, ever renewed by Prophets and 
Apocalyptists. All the fervour, which in other peoples | 
has expressed itself in patriotic pride and statecraft, was 
concentrated on the national religion. For them there 
was no art or architecture to provide outlet for the 
energies of the finest minds—outside Jerusalem no shrine 
might be built, and the art which expresses itself in 
‘sraven images and the likeness of anything on heaven 
and earth’ was banned. Not yet had the opportunity 
presented itself for extensive commercial enterprise. 
Nothing large and worthy was left but to meditate on 
their religion. And this religion with a unique emphasis 
taught that the national God was all-powerful and all 
good—a lesson daily contradicted by the facts of life.’ 


* Exuberance of vitality is a characteristic of the Jew; no race has 
ever lived through and lived down so much. And since life i is essentially 
that which feels (that is, which is susceptible to quality) it is perhaps not 


III AN ANCIENT STORY 63 


Of this race and into its traditions, after five hundred 
years of such experience, were born Jesus Christ and His 
great interpreters, St. Paul and him we name St. John: 
and between Him and them a Cross had intervened. 
The crucifixion came as a final refutation of the theory— 
against which the book of Job had been the classic, but 
apparently unavailing, protest—that in this life there is 
some kind of equivalence between suffering and desert. 
The spectacle of the ideally good man brought to an “ 
ideally bad end, as a consequence of his self-devotion to 
moral and religious reform, raises the problem of evil in 
its acutest form. The career of Jesus is a test case. 
Indeed, for all who ask the meaning of the Universe it 
is the test case. The Cross of Christ must be, either the \ 
darkest spot of allin the mystery of existence, or a search- | 
light by the aid of which we may penetrate the sur- 
rounding gloom. 

And from reflection on that cross there has dawned 
upon the mind of man a new vision of God—a vision of 
a God who Himself enters into the world’s pain, and 
thereby breaks the power of the world’s sin. And with 
this has gone a new perception of the possibilities of 
pain—an apprehension that there is a kind and quality 
of pain that is creative, curative, redemptive, and that 
this is a kind of pain which man is privileged to share 


surprising that the Jew has always shown a peculiarly keen apprehension 
of value—alike in things material and spiritual. As trafficker or artist, 
as world-financier or revolutionary, as musician or scientific discoverer, 
he is still remarkable. In a later chapter I shall show grounds for taking 
the concept of Life as a key to the interpretation of Reality. If that be 
so, we have an additional reason for giving special study to a literature 
embodying the concentrated experience of a race gifted with such intense 
vitality and a sense of value so enhanced. Not only in the book of 
Job, but also in Proverbs (‘My son, despise not thou the chastening of 
the Lord . . .”) and in Isaiah liii. (Who hath believed our report .. .’) 
new lines of thought in regard to the problem of evil are opened up in 
ns ne Testament, to be constructively developed, and synthetized in 
the New. 


64 REALITY CHAP. 


with God. Evil is neither explained nor denied; it is 
defeated. ‘Christianity thus gave to souls the faith and 
strength to grasp life’s nettle’.* 


Bryonp PHILOSOPHY 

A religion will give strength to grasp life’s nettle 
only to those who believe it true. But we have seen 
(p. 44 f.) that what is meant by truth is adequacy in 
representation. Science and Religion are alike in that 
they can apprehend Reality only under forms which 
analysis shows to be symbolic. Hence to ascertain the 
extent to which a religious representation in story 
form is true, we must put two questions. 

(1) Is this particular Representation congruous 
with what we know in other ways about the nature of 
the Universe? This is equivalent to asking whether the 
philosophy which it implies is one borne out by the 
facts of History and Natural Science. 

(2) Has it the dynamic power essential to a repre- 
sentation of quality?—for quality, we have seen, is 
adequately represented only when we are made to 
experience it. More particularly, is it a practical solu- 
tion of the problem of the evil will, and does it make 
possible the ‘defeat of pain’? This is a question 
which must be explored mainly in the light of Psychology 
and everyday life. 

These two questions cannot profitably be studied in 
complete isolation. But, roughly speaking, Chapters IV.- 
VII. of this book form an attempt to answer the first 
—so far as possible without recourse to the technical 
apparatus of Philosophy. The second is dealt with 
mainly in Chapters VIIT. and IX. It will, however, 


* F. von Hiigel, Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion, 
p. 112. (Dent, 1921.) 


ul AN ANCIENT STORY 65 


make the argument somewhat clearer if I say some- 
thing in this place on the rélation of the two questions 
to one another. 

Tennyson wrote: 

For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers, 
Where truth in closest words shall fail, 
When truth embodied in a tale 

Shall enter in at lowly doors. 

Croce, the professional philosopher, is, it would seem, 
less apprehensive of the possibility that ‘the closest 
words’ may fail. To him Religion is essentially myth; 
and myth is simply philosophy at an elementary stage— 
a method of envisaging the nature of Reality, very suit- 
able for the ignorant multitude but unnecessary to the 
true philosopher, who sees clearly the truth which the 
myth is feebly struggling to express. 

Emphatically that is not the view I hold. If the 
truth were expressed in a clear form elsewhere, it would 
be waste of time to explore exactly how much of it is 
sketched out more dimly in an ancient myth. Had I 
found intellectual satisfaction in any system of 
philosophy that I have come across, that philosophy 
would be the thing which I should now be trying to pre- 
sent in language intelligible to the plain man. 

I am not denying that this ‘ancient story’ does 
express in symbolic form certain things which can be 
quite well expressed in philosophic terms. To say, for 
example, that God was made man is to affirm a kinship 
between the spirit of man and the essential nature of 
the Power behind the veil; it is to assert the Divinity 
of Man—a Divinity potential in all men, even if actu- 
alised only in one. Such an assertion implies philosophy, 
and that at more than an elementary stage of develop- 
ment. And the philosophy implied is obviously one that 


66 REALITY CHAP. 


has an affinity to certain of the classical systems while 
violently conflicting with certain others. Croce is right 
in seeing philosophy implicit in the story; he errs, I 
suggest, In not seeing that there is also something more. 
Call it frankly ‘myth’—yet the depth, the range, the 
intensity of experience which lie behind this Super- 
myth transcend the grasp of any single individual; it is ~ 
something which the thinker may by close study dimly 
apprehend, but it is not something which by thinking 
he ever would have reached. We may imagine a 
philosopher, who had drunk deep the cup of sorrow and 
of wrong, having the genius by the light so gained to 
interpret some fragment of that age-long race experi- 
ence. Even so, could he express what he divined in the 
language of philosophy, abstract and intellectualised as 
that necessarily must be? Perhaps he, too, would frame 
a myth; at any rate he must become a poet—for poetry 
can say, or at least suggest, things which cannot be 
expressed in prose. We do not, however, offer poetry to 
the uncultured multitude, reserving prose for the elect— | 
but contrariwise. And if this myth be ‘true’, it is 
wanted to-day by the élite even more than by the herd. 
Vamtas vanitatum is the cry, not of the poor and simple, 
but of those who have thought and read and enjoyed 
much. 

There is a further consideration. Looked at from 
the side of the spectator or the hearer, Art is something 
which compels a spiritual reply. Architecture, painting, 
poetry, and music have the power to elicit from him 
who sees or hears a dynamic spiritual response. They | 
are a stimulus potent to provoke a reaction of the 
personality, qualitative in kind. They can educe latent 
perceptions, kindle dormant feeling, incite to fresh activi- 
ties. Their impact is creative. So it is with Religion. 


ut AN ANCIENT STORY 67 


Poetry is not poetry unless it moves, a jest is not 
a jest unless it can amuse; just so, creed, rite or myth 
are not religion unless they can inspire. Religion is 
futile unless it is ‘a word of power’. When presented to 
men—not of course in a bare outline like the Creed, 
but with the passion of conviction by one whose own 
inmost soul has realised something of its rich and varied 
meaning——the tale of Christ has ever awakened men to 
new life.’ 

Doubtless it can have that power only for those who 
see in it, not just a noble fancy, but a valid, if symbolic, 
expression of the Soul of Things. Nevertheless, explana- 
tion in the scientific, or even in the philosophic, sense 
is not the purpose of Religion. Religion, as we saw, 
differs from Art in that it purports to be concerned with 
truth; it claims to be a ‘representation’ of Reality as 
valid in its own sphere as that of Science. But that 
representation is in terms of quality; and quality can 
be represented only if somehow it can be actually felt. 
It follows that in Religion no statement can be called 
‘true’ unless it can evoke that emotional and volitional 
response which is the most appropriate to the quality 
actually inherent in Reality. Religion must not merely 
tell us what our environment is like; it must help us 
to adapt ourselves to it. 

The Universe is something to be lived in, not merely 
to be studied; man’s attitude towards It can never be 
that of a spectator only. I cannot avoid some emotional 


1'To the average Christian the Creed is a symbol standing for the 
Gospel story as a whole, much as a flag stands for a country; my treat- 
ment of it in this chapter has been influenced by this fact. Of course, 
however, if the Gospel story were not so presupposed, most of what I 
have written about its dynamic power would be untrue. The fact that 
the Gospels themselves have the quality of great Art is not without 
importance in estimating the value of the religious ‘representation’ 
they embody. 


68 REALITY CHAP. 


and practical, as well as an intellectual, reaction towards 
the Not-myself in its totality; what I can do is to seek 
the right reaction. I may picture the Power behind 
things as a lifeless Machine, as a purblind Life-force, or 
as a benevolent Intelligence—and my practical and emo- 
tional reaction to It will vary accordingly. And it ought 
so to vary; for the reaction which is appropriate if the 
first or second of these conceptions be correct, will be 
entirely inappropriate if the last is nearest to the truth. 

At this point Philosophy comes in. Unless the 
intellect can affirm a factual correspondence between 
Reality and the representation of It by Religion, the 
Christian Creed is left as the most pathetic, just because 
the most sublime, of all the empty dreams of man. 
But the philosophy implied in it is only part of what it 
means. It is psychologically dynamic; it not only 
presents an idea of Reality, but it stings man to respond 
to it in the way that is best, supposing the idea to be 
true. It is a poem—but a real person lived it. It is 
drama—but it was acted out upon a real cross. The — 
universal is individualised, the abstract has become con- 
crete. Therefore this Drama can bring to man not a 
theory of the Universe but the bread of life, not Theism 
but God. 

The question ‘What quality has Reality’ is one 
that many deliberately decline to ask. Unfortunately 
for them it is one which they cannot decline to answer— 
in fact, if not in theory. It is not possible to avoid 
reacting in some way, other than merely intellectual, 
to the Totality of Things. To live at all is to live in a 
certain spirit and a certain way. There is no need to 
speak the words ‘Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
die’. To live in one kind of way is to say this daily, 
in deed if not in word; it is to affirm indifference to the 


mr AN ANCIENT STORY 69 


right as a quality in Reality. To live in a different 
way is, in deed if not in word, to affirm the contrary. 
But which is true? Which way of life, that is, is the 
reaction to Reality appropriate to its actual quality? 
For if an iceberg is a fitting symbol of Its quality, one 
kind of reaction is appropriate; if the Crucifix, quite 
another. Of these two pictures, which is the more con- 
eruous with the reality of things? That is a matter, not 
of fancy, but of fact. It may be fact that is hard to 
ascertain; but it is worth the search. 

There are some who will object:—The story has come 
down to us from ancient days; it took shape in an age 
in many ways remote from ours and before the dawn of 
modern science; can we learn anything from such an 
age? The objection would be weighty were it not for 
the fact, so often reiterated above, that (considered as a 
mode of ‘representation’) Religion is to be classed, not 
with Science, but with Poetry and Art. Poetry and Art, 
whenever truly great, are things age does not stale. In 
that they are unlike Science. In the sphere of scientific 
knowledge each generation starts where the last left off; 
ancient and obsolete are all but synonymous. It is other- 
wise with Art or Letters. Homer and Shakespeare are 
not out of date; the sculpture of Greece,’ the cathedrals 
of the Middle Ages, still exact our wonder. And, if 
Religion expresses its creative intuition in ways nearer 
akin to those of Art than to those of Science, the creations 
of its classic age should never lose their power. 

This is not just theory. Look at the facts and say 
how and where the march of progress has left Christ 
behind. Have men since found an answer more true 


*On this point the judgment of a man like Rodin is of special 
interest. ‘No artist will ever surpass Pheidias—for progress exists in the 
World, but not in Art. The greatest of sculptors . . . will remain for 
ever without an equal,—A. Rodin, Art, p. 234, E.T. (Hodder, 1912.) 


70 REALITY CHAP, IIT 


or more inspiring to the questions which every man or 
woman who thinks and feels is compelled to face? Not 
yet has Science or Philosophy solved the riddle of exist- 
ence; not yet have sorrow and wrong, disease and disillu- 
sionment departed from the earth. Death has not lost 
his sting, the grave its victory: Tull that time comes, or 
till some nobler, truer vision has been seen, it is time 
wasted to interrogate the nature of the Universe without 
first deeply pondering how far, or in what way, that 
ancient answer to the riddle may assist our quest. 


iN, 


TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 


71 


TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 
SYNOPSIS 


FREEWILL 


The arguments against the freedom of the Will seem unanswerable; 
but they prove too much. They prove that no reasoning can prove 
anything—in which case, the argument against Freewill, and with it the 
whole structure of Science, falls to the ground. 

The absurdity of this conclusion forces us to scrutinise the nature of 
human knowledge. 


ScientIFIC KNOWLEDGE 


Knowledge in the scientific sense involves three processes: (1) 
Classification, (2) Analysis, (3) Explanation, by which is meant seeing 
the individual thing as an instance of a general law. 

If there exists anything which is recalcitrant to any of these 
processes, 1t must—just so far as it is that—slip through the meshes of 
the net of scientific knowledge. Such a thing is Life. 


CLASSIFICATION AND INDIVIDUALITY 


Classification concentrates on the resemblances between individuals 
and ignores their differences. It is a practical device—necessary because 
it is impossible to ‘handle’ things in large numbers unless they can be 
sorted out into groups which can be treated as if each member of them 
were identically alike. 

When we deal with men or works of art individuality is all 
important; and it exists, and may be important, elsewhere. 

Classification, since it ignores individuality, is a method of abstrac- 
tion. In dealing with the atom of hydrogen or the ameeba, individu- 
ality may be ignored, but in higher types of life it becomes more and 
more important. 

Scientific knowledge, therefore, being based on classification, is com- 
pelled to ignore a phenomenon which becomes more striking with 
every rise in the scale of life. 


Tue Nature or Lire 


Life is not a substance which can be observed under the micro- 
scope, but something different in kind. It is a principle of organisation. 
The relation of life to matter is a problem at present unsolved. But 
the existence of life, and up to a point its nature, is known to us, not 


72 


inferentially or as an object of scientific knowledge, but directly from 
the fact that we are alive. 

Life is not to be pictured as an ‘atmosphere’, or as an ‘ocean’ of some 
invisible fluid. It is a principle of self-organising individuation. 

In Art there is no conflict between mechanism and meaning: why 
suppose there is such in Nature? But if there is purpose in Nature, 
Science could not reveal it; for purpose being essentially qualitative 
is outside the sphere of Science. 

The probability that in life even at the sub-human level there is an 
element of spontaneity. 


Tue Fivux or THInas 


Another limitation of scientific knowledge arises from the fact that 
while Reality is dynamic, knowledge is of the static. To know (in the 
scientific sense) a living thing we must conceive of it as if dead. 


Tue BrotocicaL ScIENCES 


The controversy between the Mechanist and Neo-Vitalist schools 
raises questions the answer to which seems to depend, less on biological 
facts, than on the theory of knowledge we adopt. 

Biology and Physiology are compelled by the nature of the human 
mind to use the concepts of mechanism and law; but it is more 
important in these sciences than in Physics and Chemistry to recognise 
the symbolic nature of those concepts. They are adequate as a ‘descrip- 
tion’ of behaviour, but not as a complete account of it; for that the 
concept of Life must somehow be introduced. 

The concept of Life is in the last resort anthropomorphic; it is an 
interpretation of the movements, etc., of other men and animals in terms 
of our own inner experience. This anthropomorphism is unavoidable; 
but provided we know what we are doing and use proper safeguards, 
there is no reason for avoiding it. 


PsycHOLOGY 


Modern Psychology has been extremely successful in applying the 
conceptions of mechanism and law to the human mind. But it must 
use anthropomorphic conceptions like lbido, and it supplements the 
methods of pure science by the anthropomorphic method of sympa- 
thetic understanding. 

‘Behaviourism’ is a completely logical position—and also a reductio 
ad absurdum of the assumption that the only way of knowledge is by 
the methods of ‘pure’ Science. 

Psychology must, to a large extent, dispense with measurement— 
the very basis of the physical sciences. If that fact be held to dis- 
qualify Psychology for the title of Science, it is only the more evident 
that there is a valid way of knowledge outside the sphere of Science— 
and this way is one by which Quality can be apprehended. 


73 


History AND Everypay Lire 


As in Psychology, so in History and in the ordinary affairs of life, 
scientific methods are regularly supplemented by an intuitive knowl- 
edge of the inner quality of life akin to that employed by the Artist. 


ReELIGIoN AS KNOWLEDGE 


Religion employs both methods, but in a reversed order of 
importance. Myth, rite and sacred book are externalisations of an 
inward spirit. Religion looks to these first; but it will degenerate into 
superstition unless it checks conceptions derived from these in the light 
of scientific knowledge. 


ConcLUSION | 

If we make the assumption (for which reasons will be given in the 
next chapter) that the fundamental element in Reality is of the nature 
of Life, it follows that Reality can only partially be understood by the 
methods of pure Science. The experiment, therefore, must be tried of 
supplementing knowledge of the purely scientific kind by inferences 
drawn from the nature of Life, in other words, by a method of anthropo- 
morphism scientifically controlled. 


ADDITIONAL NOTES 


A. INSPIRATION 
B. Kant’s Turory or KNow.epar 


74 


IV 
TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 


FREEWILL 


THe ancient problem of Freewill raises the question, 
‘What is knowledge?’ in a way which compels the atten- 
tion even of the man in the street. The case against 
Freewill seems in logic to be irrefutable; but the con- 
clusion that we have no power of choice and no spon- 
taneous initiative in action is so absurd that we cannot 
help suspecting that the fault is in the logic. There 
must be a ‘catch’ somewhere. The ‘catch’, I suggest, 
will be found in the fact that there are two different 
and disparate ways by which the human mind becomes 
aware of truth. There is the method of Science—classi- 
fication, analysis, and reduction to law—which is applic- 
able to all visible and material things; and there is the 
method of direct intuitive knowledge (and inference 
therefrom), which must be used to supplement and check 
the results of the other method, wheresoever there exists 
that mysterious, invisible something which we all 
‘Life’. 

Let us look into this question of Freewill. I am 
what I am as the result of inherited physique and 
temperament, modified and developed by. the environ- 
ment in which I have lived—that is, by country, school, 
persons, books, accidents, etc. To these influences I 


7 5 


76 REALITY CHAP. 


owe the experiences, the opinions, and even the ideals 
which condition what I wish, think, or do as new circum- 
stances arise. It is not obvious, then, that what I think 
and wish and do is as much determined by causes external 
to myself as is the course of a river by the mountains 
through which it winds? This conclusion psychologists 
of the school of Freud believe they can still further 
fortify by tracing a relation of mechanical causation 
between the conscious thought of the adult and uncon- 
scious psychic processes the course of which has been 
determined by inheritance or by some purely accidental 
occurrences in early life. 

But when we look this conclusion in the face, it 
has awkward consequences. If the Determinist is right 
in denying the existence of spontaneous initiative, the 
application of his principle cannot be limited to action; 
his argument, if it proves anything, proves that wishes 
and thoughts, quite as much as deeds, are mechanic- 
ally determined. The Freudians so far are right in 
emphasising this. But here comes the difficulty; if 
Determinism is a sound theory, then it is determined 
which arguments shall appeal to me as valid and which 
shall appear to be fallacies. It follows, then, that my 
thinking the case for Determinism conclusive con- 
stitutes no reason at all for believing it to be so; I 
think so merely because some purely accidental circum- 
stances of heredity and environment have determined 
that I should be the kind of person to whom the argu- 
ments for Determinism appeal. And if my opponent 
is convinced by the arguments for Freewill, that is not 
because the arguments are superior, but merely because, 
by his heredity and environment, it is determined that 
he shall think them so. Accordingly, if the Determinist 
is right, reasoning can prove nothing; it is merely 


IV TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 77 


an ingenious method of providing us with apparently 
rational excuses for believing what in any case we can- 
not help believing. But if all reasoning is a ‘pathetic 
fallacy’, then the reasons for believing in Determinism 
itself are fallacious. Not only that; unless reason is 
that which can discriminate, there is no criterion of 
truth and falsehood; all knowledge collapses; one 
hypothesis is as good as another, and Science itself is a 
fairy tale. This conclusion can be avoided only if we see 
that, as a necessary postulate of reasoning, there must be 
inherent in the nature of thought enough of spontaneity 
to enable it to discriminate between true and false; 
and that means, in its reaction to material submitted 
to it, to choose between two or more alternatives. Were 
thought no more than an automatic reflex action of the 
organism to circumstance, the nature of that reaction 
would be predetermined; the mind might react by 
judging statements to be either true or false, but such 
judgment would be determined, not by the actual merits 
of the case, but merely by the exact nature of the 
stimulus, emotional or otherwise, given by the way the 
statement was put. True, our judgments often do come 
very near to being of this nature; but the essential dif- 
ference between prejudice and real knowledge consists in 
our having some capacity to rise above such automatic 
reactions. 

Recent psychology has emphasised the dependence 
of thought on desire; indeed, there are those who would 
regard reason as a function of ‘conation’, that is, of will 
and desire. Thought, desire and will are indissoluble 
elements in a single vital process; yet biologically cona- 
tion seems prior in importance—and, to a large extent, 
in time. Even in human life, thought is exercised 
mainly in devising means to ends defined by the 


78 REALITY CHAP. 


satisfaction of practical need. The scientist and 
philosopher (for whom thinking is in itself an end) are 
a late and rare product of the evolutionary process. 
But just in so far as thought is a function of conation 
(to discuss exactly how far it is this would be beside my 
present purpose), it follows that the element of spon- 
taneity which we cannot but recognise in thought must 
be read back into will also. Indeed there is much to be 
sald for the view that spontaneity is of the essence of life 
itself, and, to quote a happy phrase of Prof. J. A. 
Thomson, that ‘the response of the organism to external 
stimulus is of the nature not of a rebound, but of a 
reply’. 

For the moment, however, I am concerned with the 
problem of Freedom not so much for its own sake as 
for its bearing on the problem, What is Knowledge? 
Determinism seems logically irrefutable (but see p. 273), 
yet it not only denies a fact which seems to be a funda- 
mental datum of consciousness, it also inevitably involves 
the conclusion that all reasoning—incidentally, therefore, 
all Science—is an illusion. If so, the reasoning which 
proves Determinism must, along with all other reasoning, 
be pronounced a fallacy. Such a result is a danger 
signal. The scientists and philosophers who have 
argued for Determinism are not fools; and if suspicion 
attaches to this conclusion it must extend far beyond. 
The case for Determinism is of such a kind that, if it 
shows signs of breaking down, the question is at once 
raised, What, then, is the nature and validity of scientific 
knowledge? For the very possibility of scientific knowl- 
edge as commonly conceived is bound up with the 
assumption that the phenomenal Universe is a mechanic- 
ally determined system governed by uniform laws. 

It is not, then, the existence of a conflict, real or 


IV TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE | 79 


supposed, between Science and Religion that makes it 
necessary to scrutinise the nature of human knowledge. 
If nothing more was involved, many would decline the 
inquiry. It is the contradiction which arises for Science 
itself (as well as for everyday life), from the necessity of 
affirming both the spontaneity of thought and action and 
the reign of law. Every hour of the day we plan and 
project; and in doing so we take for granted that we are 
really free, that it will make a real difference whether 
we decide to do this or that. Yet Science (and its 
presupposition, the reign of law) affirms that we are 
automata, whose thoughts, feelings, actions, are all 
determined for us. Confronted by such a contradiction 
we are forced to raise the question whether the under- 
lying assumptions, and the methods of reaching and pre- 
senting knowledge which Science has used with such 
extraordinary success, are valid only in certain spheres 
or for certain aspects of Reality. No question can be 
more alive—for the man in the street, quite as much 
as for the philosopher. | 


SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 

Scientific knowledge differs from the work-a-day 
knowledge of everyday life mainly in being more 
systematic and more thoroughgoing. It can be analysed 
into three processes. 

(1) Knowledge is recognition—this is a walking- 
stick; that is a pig; the other thing looks like an insect, 
but of a kind I have not seen before. That is to say, 
knowing means noting in regard to any object that it 
is like or unlike, or partly like and partly unlike, some- 
thing already known. Knowing, then, in the first place 
consists in discovering the right class in which a thing 
should be placed. Knowledge is classification. 


80 REALITY, CHAP. 


(2) But that is not all. To understand a motor-car 
I fix my attention on the different parts of which it is 
made up. I also note carefully how they fit together 
into a single whole. The body, the wheels, the brakes, 
the engine and every one of those innumerable com- 
ponent parts, must be studied individually and also in 
their relation to one another and to the whole. Scientific 
knowledge differs from popular in that this process is 
carried further. The chemist analyses a drop of water 
into molecules of oxygen and hydrogen; the physicist 
takes up the task and resolves the atoms of which these 
gases are composed into little solar systems of protons 
and electrons. Knowledge is analysis. 

(3) There is a third stage. Knowledge attempts to 
give an answer to the question, Why? I am awakened 
by a noise. Is it something rattling in the wind, or 
perhaps a burglar? Listening intently, I gather new 
facts. It seems to come from near the floor in a corner 
of the room. It has the rhythm of gnawing. I frame a 
hypothesis. It must be a rat. Rats, I know, do gnaw 
wood at night, and I account for this particular noise on 
the theory that it is a particular instance of that general- 
ised observation. Knowledge is explanation. Or to 
take an example from the high realms of Science. 
Newton showed how the observed facts as to the motion 
of the planets round the sun, of the moon round the 
earth, and the (corrected) observations as to the mass of 
earth and moon would be accounted for by the hypothesis 
that every material object in the Universe attracts every 
other with a force varying directly with the product of 
their masses and inversely with the square of their 
distance. Since innumerable facts subsequently observed 
were found to accord with this hypothesis and— 
until quite recently—none that conflicted with it, the 


Iv TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 81 


hypothesis, that this particular uniformity of behaviour 
as between material objects was of universal validity, 
seemed to be established. It therefore ceased to be 
styled hypothesis and was referred to as a Law. When 
individual facts are seen as particular instances of a 
general rule, or when two or more such general rules are 
seen as instances of some still more general rule, then 
from the point of view of scientific knowledge they are 
said to be explained. The general rules, or uniformities 
of behaviour in things or classes of things, are commonly 
spoken of as Laws of Nature. The crown of scientific 
knowledge is the discovery of such laws. Scientific knowl- 
edge then is explanation by reference to general laws. 

The method, then, of Science is to take the individual 
concrete thing, and (a) to assign it to a class, (6b) to split 
it up into its component parts and (c) to see everything 
about it as a particular instance of some universal law. 
But the method of Science is only a systematic and clear- 
headed way of doing what half-consciously and in a rule- 
of-thumb way we all do in everyday life, whenever we 
use our minds to ‘know’. 

But what if there be anywhere anything that either 
(a) has some element of uniqueness which eludes classi- 
fication, or (6) has in it something which defies analysis, 
something which completely disappears when analysis 
begins, or (c) behaves in a way which cannot plausibly 
be described as merely one instance of a mode of action in 
accordance with some universal law? 

Obviously, if anything exists which has any one of 
these characteristics, that thing will, just to the extent 
to which it possesses any one of them, slip through the 
meshes of the net of scientific knowledge. To know, in 
the sense in which Science uses that word, means to 
classify, to analyse and to explain as an instance of a 


82 REALITY, CHAP 


general law. Whatever, therefore, cannot be classified, 
or analysed, or referred to a general law simply eludes 
Science. If it is to be known at all, it can only be by 
some method of apprehension other than those employed 
by Science. 

But, we ask, do things possessing any of these 
characteristics as a matter of fact exist? Certainly. At 
least. one of them is possessed by everything that is alive; 
and in man, of living things the most alive, all three 
exist. The possibility dawns upon us that where Life is 
there is something with which knowledge (in the scien- 
tific sense) cannot entirely cope. 


CLASSIFICATION AND INDIVIDUALITY 


We have seen that the basis of all scientific knowledge 
is classification. To understand means to see a thing in 
its relation to the rest of things we know about, to see 
how far it resembles and how far it differs from other 
like things. Having classified an object we can then 
relate it to the system of observed uniformities of 
antecedent and consequent (or cause and effect, if we 
prefer that ambiguous terminology) which we call the 
Laws of Nature. Thus, in the scientific sense of the 
word, we can only understand where we have succeeded 
in classifying. The more refined and more illuminating 
our principle of classification the better we shall be able 
to understand. The advance of Science consists mainly 
in discovering more subtle and at the same time more 
simple principles of classification, which enable us to 
co-ordinate more and more facts in a logically articu- 
lated system under certain primary generalisations or 
laws. 

Now classification demands not only the detection 
of identity between all members of the same class, but 


IV TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 83 


also the ignoring of individual divergence from the class 
type. At the bottom of the scale of existence the identity 
between members of a class may approximate to, or even 
reach, completeness. Thus for practical purposes we 
assume—though the assumption may well be false—that 
every atom of hydrogen is in all respects and for all 
purposes exactly like every other. At this end, then, 
of the scale of being, classification appears to be some- 
thing of objective and universal validity, being based 
upon the discovery of identities of a purely objective and 
absolute nature. 

But, as we ascend the scale of being, our confidence 
in the objective and absolute character of classification 
begins to be shaken. It begins to dawn upon us that 
classification is a convenient, indeed a necessary, method 
of handling things by the simple device of ignoring their 
individuality. For, whenever we are dealing with 
entities like human beings in which individuality is of 
importance, it becomes obvious that the identities on 
which classifications are based are nothing more than a 
selection made for some purely subjective purpose. 
A zoologist may assign man to the class of mammals 
called ‘primates’; and for the purpose of studying his 
relation to other animals this classification is highly 
illuminating. But man can only be classed as a member 
of the class ‘primates’ either by ignoring all those quali- 
ties which are not shared by the rest of the class, or by 
defining man as a sub-class every member of which has 
certain identical qualities in addition to those common 
to the larger class. We must then go on classifying on 
zoological principles and distinguish further sub-classes 
within the class ‘man,’ e.g. the classes of white, yellow, 
black men. But, having got as far as that, we soon find 
a need for classification based on other than purely 


84 REALITY CHAP. 


zoological considerations. Suppose I am taken ill im 
Japan, the person I need is one who belongs to the class 
‘doctor’, and the best doctor available may or may not 
be a member of the class ‘white’; the zoological 
classification by race colour becomes irrelevant. The 
classification I now require is one based upon the quite 
different principle of medical degree or training. But 
I soon discover that this is only a partial guide. All 
doctors of like technical qualification are not equally 
good; and whether I recover from my illness or not may 
depend upon how far the individual called in possesses 
that personal flair which makes one doctor so much 
superior to another in diagnosis. 

One awakes to the fact that classification has always 
a practical aim. In order to ‘handle’ things at all we 
must think of them as belonging to one class or another, 
that is to say, treat them as being for our purpose identi- 
cal. A quartermaster who has to feed a battalion of 
1000 men must think of them not as men but as ‘mouths’. 
For his purpose it is irrelevant that some are honest, 
others thieving, some illiterate, others highly educated, 
some stupid, others brilliant. But to a bank manager 
selecting a clerk, to a newspaper proprietor seeking an 
editor, or to an operatic producer on the look-out for a 
conductor, these differences between men are the only 
things that matter. 

And classification is no less necessary if the things 
we wish to ‘handle’ are, not men or solid substances, but 
ideas and their embodiment in Art. If I write a book 
of literary criticism I must classify poetry as epic, dra- 
matic, lyric, ete. Only so can I deal with it in a way 
that is in any sense ‘scientific’. But then I make the 
discovery that, however apt my classification is, and how- 
ever illuminating it may be for the study of the relations 


IV TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE $5 


of a particular poem with others in regard to aim, 
method and technique, it just leaves out the essential 
thing—the unique individuality of the poem. To under- 
stand Hamlet it is necessary to consider it as a member 
of this class and of that—as poetic drama, as tragedy, as 
Elizabethan, etc. But in the last resort what makes 
Hamlet worth the trouble of considering at all is just 
that unique combination of qualities and effects which 
is not to be found identically elsewhere. That is to say, 
the thing about it which we most want to understand is 
precisely that which most completely eludes classification 
and is most individual. 

And what is true of a work of art is still more true 
of man. If the man happens to be a man of genius his 
individuality is of a kind so marked as to be a matter of 
world-wide concern. But individuality exists in every 
man; nor is the degree in which it exists at all propor- 
tionate to the extent to which his name is known outside 
the family or the office. In a less conspicuous degree 
individuality can be detected in animals. Dogs have 
character, though only those who know them well may 
be able to detect it. How far down the scale of life 
individuality can be traced is for our immediate purpose 
irrelevant. It suffices for my argument that individu- 
ality- does exist somewhere in the world. 

But once it is realised that every human being— 
and quite possibly every living thing—forms in a sense 
‘a class by himself’, we get fresh light as to the nature, 
meaning and purpose of classification as it is used in 
actual practice. In actual practice when we classify, 
what we really do is to consider, not individuals as a 
whole, but merely certain bits of them. We artificially 
isolate certain aspects of individuals and then treat 
them as if these aspects were the whole of them. We 


86 REALITY CHAP. 


may class men by their capacity to make runs, to learn 
music, or to march 25 miles a day, according as we want 
cricketers for a team, singers for a choir, or soldiers for 
a punitive expedition. But in each case we are only 
considering bits of them; other bits, which for other 
purposes may be more important, are simply left out. 
That is what is meant by the formula classification is 
abstraction; it is treating a group of individuals who 
have certain qualities in common as if feDEY possessed 
these qualities and none other. 

Now when we are dealing with a group of the amceba 
family the qualities in which individuals differ are so 
infinitesimal as to be practically negligible. Close 
observers believe they can detect individuality even in 
the amoeba *; if they are right, then just to the extent 
to which individuality exists the classification of the 
amceba is an abstraction; that 1s to say, it 1s a statement 
quite true so far as it goes, but incomplete; it leaves 
out something. But as one ascends in the scale of life 
individuality becomes a more and more important factor. 
A sheep has more individuality than a snail, a dog 
than a sheep, a man than a dog, a genius than a 
dullard. 

Hence, as we ascend in the scale of life, any generali- 
sations we can make, any laws we can observe, will 
necessarily be, not less true, but less complete and 
exhaustive statements of truth; and the higher we ascend 
the more does the relative importance of what they leave 
unstated to what they succeed in stating continually 
increase. In the realm of Physies and Chemistry the 
generalisations of science fit the facts as exactly as 
spare parts fit a standard bicycle. When we get to 


1J. Arthur Thomson, The System of Animate Nature, p. 179 ff. 
(Williams and Norgate, 1920.) 


Iv TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 87 


Psychology, though we can still make classifications and 
discover general laws, they fit the individual case only 
approximately—like a pair of boots ready made. Just 
as the boot manufacturer tries to secure better fits by 
continually producing fresh intermediate sizes, so 
Science is always refining on and perfecting its earlier 
classifications. But to this process there is a necessary 
limit; at the point where an individual becomes the sole 
member of his class, the purpose of classification has 
disappeared. 

The value of the conception of Law, with its 
necessary basis in classification, is that it enables us to 
‘explain’ the individual instance by seeing it as a par- 
ticular case of a general rule. But, if no two men, and 
probably no two living beings, are so exactly identical 
that the differences between them are for all conceivable 
purposes irrelevant, then clearly the kind of ‘explanation’ 
which it is the purpose of scientific method to offer 
becomes, in so far as these differences are concerned, 
inapplicable. 

But this does not mean—it is important to note this— 
that Science and its methods are at fault. What we are 
‘up against’ is a limitation inherent in the human intel- 
lect. - The fact that individuality is something which 
eludes classification is not like a defect, which improved 
methods may some day enable us to make good; 
it belongs to the nature of classification as such. Classi- 
fication, I repeat, is a method of handling things by 
the simple device of ignoring their individuality; and 
the nature of the human mind is such that by no other 
method can it handle a plurality of things. To ‘under- 
stand’—in the purely scientific sense of that word— 
means to conceive as a member of a class of identicals, 
to ‘explain’ means to see as a case of a general law. 


88 REALITY CHa 


Hence exactly to the extent in which a thing (or person) 
is individual and unique, it has about it something that, 
from the nature of the human intellect, eludes such 
understanding. All that Science can do with individu- 
ality is to ignore it; that is to say, Science is compelled 
to ignore a phenomenon that becomes more and more 
striking with every rise in the scale of life. Obviously, 
then, Science is by its own methods excluded from 
knowing Reality in one of its most important aspects. 
The individual can be in the concrete case perceived, but 
never in the abstract scientific sense explained. 


Tue Nature or Lire 

All living things, from the mere fact that they have 
life, exhibit at least one (the second named) of the 
characteristics mentioned above (p. 81) as necessarily 
eluding the net of scientific knowledge. No living body 
admits of complete analysis into ultimate constituents. 
Living bodies can readily be analysed into their chemical 
and physical constituents—but life is not one of these. 
Nor is it likely that life is some substance, so far 
unidentified, which with finer instruments or improved 
technique the scientist might isolate. Life, it would 
seem, is something different in kind, something of 
which the one thing we can safely affirm is that it is, or 
acts as, a principle of organisation creative in character. 
This description would not cease to be appropriate even 
if a means of producing life in a laboratory were some 
day to be discovered. Such a discovery would prove that, 
given physical conditions sufficiently favourable, that 
synthetic activity which we call by the name ‘life’ will 
‘emerge’. But such ‘emergence’ would in no way con- 
stitute a discovery that life is a residual constituent of 
certain bodies which hitherto had eluded analysis. 


1V TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 89 


In the conception of Emergent Evolution propounded 
by Prof. Lloyd Morgan stress is laid on the analogy 
between the first appearance of life and the fact that in 
Physics and Chemistry the combination in a particular 
way of certain factors results in the ‘emergence’ of 
properties which are more and other than the mechanical 
sum of the properties of the several factors. In so far 
as the analogy holds it adds emphasis to the familiar 
observation that things are what they are by virtue of 
differences, not in the nature of the ‘stuff’? of which they 
are composed, but in the way in which they are organised. 
The brain of Shakespeare and a clod of earth are alike 
made up of protons and electrons—but they are differ- 
ently organised. Similarly, a sonnet of Shakespeare and 
a paragraph from the Police Court news are alike made 
up out of twenty-six letters of the alphabet and a few 
stops—but they are differently organised. In both cases 
the important question to ask is, What is the organising 
principle? 

In the world of inorganic matter the principle of 
organisation is still to seek. It is otherwise when we 
study living organisms. Here we find an organising 
principle, directive, co-ordinative, curative, which we call 
Life, the existence of which we are compelled to postulate 
in order to explain the observed phenomena. Life is 
not a substance that can be seen under a microscope, 
nor is it an entity comparable to an electron. Indeed 
it cannot become an object of knowledge in the scientific 
sense of that word. Life is only found in connexion 
with the particular collocations of matter of which it 
is the organising principle; it may be that the distinc- 
tion between life and matter is not ultimate. In that 
case it might be far more correct to describe matter as an 
elementary mode of life than to call life a mode of matter. 


90 REALITY CHAP. 


Be that as it may—and in the present state of human 
knowledge no theory as to the ultimate relation of life 
to matter can be more than a tentative hypothesis— 
the existence of life is not a hypothesis but a fact. 
For, paradoxically enough, though life is a thing which 
cannot be an object of scientific knowledge, it is a thing 
of which we have a direct apprehension, a thing of the 
existence of which we are more certain than of anything 
else. I think and I feel, which means I am alive, of 
that I can have no doubt; yet my being alive is not a 
thing I know in the way that I know external objects, 
nor can I know the life that is in me by the method of 
scientific knowledge. But if I did not already think 
and feel, I could have neither common-sense knowledge 
of everyday things nor the organised form of that 
knowledge which we call Science. 

There would seem also to be a close relation between 
life and individuation. In the last section it was 
convenient to treat individuality as if it were merely 
a residual difference left after all the resemblances 
between one thing and others, or one person and others, 
have been subtracted. But unless we go further than 
this, its real significance will be missed. At least some 
minimum of individuality seems to be a necessary 
accompaniment of life. We are apt to think of life as 
if it were a kind of ‘atmosphere’; or we picture ‘the 
ocean of life’ as a uniform invisible fluid, a certain 
amount of which (varying according to their activity or 
size) flows out into all living creatures. It is nothing of 
the sort. Life, wherever it can be observed, is not only 
an organising principle, but a principle of unity and 
individuation. The lowest organism differs from a piece 
of inorganic substance of the same size just because the 
particles of matter in it are organised so as to subserve the 


IV TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 91 


.onative and appetitive disposition of the organism as a 
whole. Life is essentially that which organises matter for 
a constructive end—that end, towards the bottom of 
the scale of life, being apparently no more, but also no 
less, than the continuance of itself, in the face of serious 
obstacles, through self and race preservation. Life, 
then, is organisation with a view to struggle; and even 
where the end striven for may seem, in the first place, 
to be race preservation, the focus of organisation and 
effort is always an individual organism. If from one 
point of view life is strife, from another it is self- 
organising individuation. 

Physiology has attempted to explain all reactions of 
the living organism to its environment by the purely 
mechanical conception of ‘reflex action’. The attempt 
has succeeded over so large a field that most physiol- 
ogists not unreasonably hope that improved methods 
of observation may show that it holds good over the 
whole field. Zoologists, on the other hand, point to 
evidence* for the existence of a certain spontaneity 
and a certain purposefulness in the response to stimuli 
extending almost, if not quite, to the bottom of the 
scale of life. 

But it is a mistake to suppose that there is any 
necessary conflict between mechanism and_ purpose. 
Take any one of the world’s miracles of architecture— 
the Taj) Mahal, or Bourges Cathedral. There is not a 
stone, or a beam, or an ounce of cement whose presence 
and whose place cannot be mechanically explained. The 
muscular exertion of the oxen who drew the stones or 
of the workmen who chiselled them is a force measurable 
in ‘foot-pounds’, and no whit less mechanical than that 
exercised by a steam-hammer or a crane. Nowhere has 

1 J. Arthur Thomson, op. cit. p. 179 ff. 


92 REALITY CHAP. 


there been work done by any mysterious non-mechani@at 
force. There is no unexplained residuum which requires 
the hypothesis of such a force. And yet, the buildings 
thus so completely explicable in mechanical terms, 
besides subserving very definite practical uses, realise 
an esthetic quality—and that not accidental but inten- 
tional—which is the wonder of the world. ‘There is 
mechanism throughout, but the organising principle is 
purposive mind. In Art there is no conflict between 
mechanism and meaning; why then assume that, in 
explaining Nature, we are compelled to choose between 
mechanism and purpose? No doubt in Nature the pur- 
pose (if there at all) works from within the mechanism; 
but that is the way that purpose works in directing the 
mechanism of the human body. But if there 2s purpose 
in Nature, we ought not to expect Science to reveal 
it. Purpose is activity the direction of which is deter- 
mined by an end, that is, by an apprehension of quality. 
But quality cannot be measured, and therefore from its 
essential nature it—and, along with it, purpose—is out- 
side the sphere of Science. 

Again, when we study life as manifested in man, 
we discover phenomena which cannot be conceived of 
as being merely particular examples of a general law. 
Of such phenomena the most conspicuous is that 
activity of the human mind which is exhibited as often 
as it decides between true and false. Where error is 
possible, a right decision involves something which can- 
not be explained as an instance of a general law; for a 
decision which could be so explained would be automatic, 
and therefore the judgment pronounced would be 
determined, not by inherent truth or falsity, but merely 
by reflex action between the mind and its environment. 
The very existence of Science depends upon the postulate 


IV TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 93 


that the mind is capable of discriminating between true 
and false conclusions. But such discrimination cannot 
possibly be expressed in a formula or conceived as a 
particular instance of a general law. I may also recall 
my previous argument (p. 78) that the spontaneity of 
thought, implied in the possibility of distinguishing 
truth from falsehood, involves also some measure of 
spontaneity in conation also. Free thought implies 
freewill, that is, the possibility of actions which cannot 
wholly be represented as particular cases of a general law. 

But if the existence of free intelligence and spon- 
taneous choice is once admitted in the case of man, 
then the behaviour of certain animals is most naturally 
explained on the hypothesis that they too possess 
these faculties, though in a lesser degree. Indeed, 
there are zoologists and psychologists who believe that 
at least the germ of these exists wherever there is life. 
But for our present inquiry, the facts in regard to 
lower forms of life are, strictly speaking, irrelevant. 
We are investigating the method of scientific knowledge 
with a view to estimating its competency to explain all 
the phenomena of the Universe. Of these phenomena 
the one that is most difficult to explain is admittedly 
life, and that difficulty is at its maximum when life 
occurs in the intense form in which it is exhibited in 
man. The test of a theory is its adequacy to explain the 
big difficulties. A theory of the nature of knowledge 
which covers the case of life as seen in man will cover 
all the other facts; but any theory which fails to 
explain this, the greatest difficulty of all, is bankrupt from 
the start. 

THe Fiux or THINGS 

It will be convenient. in this connexion to consider 

briefly another limitation of the human intellect—on 


94. REALITY CHAP. 


which Bergson has laid great stress. Reality is dynamic, 
thought makes It static. I cannot classify things, I can- 
not observe the exact relations between them, I cannot 
reason about them, if they are changing shape, place 
or quality, while I think. If the individuals transform 
themselves while I am in the act of sorting them, my 
classification is obsolete before it is completed. If a 
length is altering all the while I am measuring it, my 
results will be inaccurate. If the premises change in 
the course of an argument the conclusion is necessarily 
unsound. Thought can only deal with what it can 
regard as static. If it treats of things that move and 
change, it must treat them as if they became, and for a 
moment remained, fixed at different points along the line. 
In the real world, however, there 1s nothing stationary; 
all things are in a state of flux: even the ‘everlasting 
hills’ are hourly being worn away, though it may take 
half a million years noticeably to change their shape. 
Yet to handle things at all we must treat them as if, 
for infinitesimal moments at least, they stood quite still. 
A bird on the wing and the shot from a gun are both in 
rapid and continuous motion. The sportsman must aim 
at the fixed point where he expects the bird to be when 
his shot has reached that same point. 

Fortunately for us the flux of things is not dis- 
orderly. It has a regularity and a rhythm which makes 
it possible to calculate its movements. In practice we 
assume that the movement of any object, instead of 
being, as it really is, continuous and indivisible, can be 
divided mto a number of separate and finite ‘jerks’, 
comparable to the points by which we plot out a curve 
we wish to draw. By that device we can treat the 
dynamic as if it were commensurable with the static. 
And we are justified in doing this because otherwise we 


IV TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 95 


could neither reason about nor manipulate the dynamic 
at all. In the realm of Physics and Inorganic Chemistry 
the regularities of Nature are so exact that the theoretic 
incommensurabilities involved in treating the dynamic 
as if it were divisible into an infinite number of static 
points may be ignored *; just as for all ordinary (and 
for most extraordinary) purposes, one may assume that 
a figure whose outer boundary is 3-14159 times its 
maximum cross measurement is a perfect circle, though 
in reality it would be a regular polygon with something 
over three hundred thousand sides. 

But when we are dealing with living beings, we have 
got into a region in which modifications in the objects 
of our study are no longer, as in Physics or Inorganic 
Chemistry, comparatively regular, simple and measur- 
able with great exactitude, but where they are spas- 
modic, subtle, and various. Clearly in this sphere that 
elusive incommensurability which necessarily results 
from our being compelled to think of the dynamic as if 
it were static, of the living as if it were dead, is likely 
to be larger in extent and also more significant. And 
the higher we ascend in the scale of life the graver is 
likely to be the error, if this consideration is ignored. 


Tuer BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 


To the preceding arguments it may be objected that 
they seem to prove too much. If whatever is alive, or 
has individuality, or cannot be wholly analysed, or pre- 
serves the least germ of spontaneity, must of necessity 


1The Quantum Theory suggests that in the ultimate analysis such 
a procedure may correspond with the actual facts. But, if so, the point 
at which what looks like an inclined plane really does become a stair- 
case lies so far beyond anything which can be actually perceived, even 
with the highest power of microscope, that it has no bearing on the 
problem of the relation of knowledge and perception; and it is that 
problem that I am here discussing. 


96 REALITY CHAP, 


slip between the meshes of the net of Science, will not 
the biologist and the physiologist have something to say? 
It looks as if one were maintaining that any scientific 
study of living creatures is like trying to hold port in @ 
strainer; you retain the crust but the wine escapes. 

Now, as a matter of fact, a number of biologists 
and physiologists have themselves been crying out of 
late against the idea that the phenomena of life and 
consciousness can be exhaustively explained in terms of 
the ‘mechanical’ categories employed by Physics and 
Chemistry. Some have produced theories of a vital 
‘entelechy’*; others have been content with a vague 
claim to an ‘autonomy’ of the vital sciences—by 
which is meant the right of these sciences to select and 
use categories of explanation other than and beyond 
those employed in Chemistry and Physics. Yet others 
resist all such claims; pointing to the immense advances 
made through the persistent use of the category of 
mechanism in the past, they urge patience and further 
effort along the old ways before seeking new. 

For a person not a scientist to intervene in such a 
controversy would be presumptuous, if the question at 
stake in this controversy were purely biological. But, 
unless I am altogether mistaken, it is really the much 
larger question of the nature of human knowledge. 

Certain of the Neo-Vitalist school seem to me to be 
in danger of forgetting an important element of truth 
of which mechanistic Materialism is the one-sided 
expression. The human mind, as we have seen, is so 
constituted that it can only ‘understand’ by classifying 
and analysing individual objects and ‘explaining’ them 
as instances of a general ‘law’. It must think of 


* An old word re-coined by Prof. Hans Driesch to express an active 
immaterial agency having an elementary psychic character. 


IV TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 97 


matter as ‘substance’, and of causation under the 
mechanistic figure of one thing pushing or pulling 
another, much as the piston moves the crank. So far 
as he frames mental pictures of the working of the thing 
he studies, the physiologist, like the physicist, requires 
his ‘model’ mechanically conceived. The physicist, 
we have seen (p. 15), has lately discovered that he 
must go deeper, he must be prepared to make use of 
concepts that are unimaginable. This fact is a warning 
to the physiologist also not to suppose that the mechan- 
istic conceptions he uses are ultimate; but it in no 
sense precludes his using them. Einstein has warned us 
against treating as ultimate our common-sense concep- 
tions of space and time and the Euclidean geometry 
that is based upon them; but for all ordinary, and most 
scientific, purposes we can still afford to do so. Mechan- 
ism is a mode of thought as natural (and as valid) 
as Euclidean geometry; and both these are modes of 
thought which, from the structure of our minds, we 
cannot help employing. It follows that sciences like 
Biology and Physiology, whose subject-matter is the 
living organism, are obliged, not by their special subject 
matter, but by the nature of the human intelligence, 
to use categories like mechanism and law precisely as 
are Physics and Chemistry. Every advance in Physi- 
ology and Psychology consists in making some further 
step forward in the process of discovering ‘laws’ 
(that is, formule under which the individual may be 
seen as a particular case of a uniform principle) or in 
detecting ‘mechanisms’ by means of which phenomena 
can be connected with one another in the relation of 
cause and effect. The difference between the sciences 
which deal with the organic and the inorganic does not 
lie there. It lies in the following consideration. In 


08 REALITY CHAP. 


Physics and in Chemistry it rarely makes any practical 
difference if one forgets for the moment that law is a 
descriptive formula (p. 272) and mechanism a symbol 
for an abstract relation, and thinks of them as if they 
were efficient causes of a compulsive character. In 
Biology and Physiology it is important all the time to 
keep these limitations in mind, and to remember that 
life is neither a description nor a symbol but something 
actually existent, which, as we know it in ourselves, seems 
to be in some sense an originating and directing cause. 
Clear thinking, however, on this point is liable to be 
side-tracked by discussion of the much-debated point 
whether the life in a given organism should be regarded 
as a kind of extra brought in from outside, or as some- 
thing which necessarily supervenes upon the occurrence 
(accidental or otherwise) of a sufficiently favourable 
organisation of matter. Interesting as this question is, 
its solution is In no way vital to the theory of knowledge 
I am trying to expound. For my present purpose it 
makes no difference whether life is an entity disparate 
from ‘matter’ (whatever matter in the last resort may 
be) or whether its origin is better described by concep- 
tions like ‘epigenesis’ or ‘emergent evolution’. What- 
ever theory be held, life is not a phenomenon of the same 
order as other phenomena—if for no other reason, because 
it is not a thing that can ever be directly observed. Its 
presence and its nature are always, and of necessity, a 
matter of inference. In the study of living organisms 
all that we can observe is behaviour, that is, a series of 
motions and reactions which take place after the impact 
or apposition of other bodies or forces to which we give 
the name ‘stimuli’. So much we can observe; what, 
then, is it that we infer? We infer that these motions 
and reactions are accompanied by, and are the resultants 


IV TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 99 


of, the presence in the organism of the thing we call 
‘life’. Moreover, we say at once of certain types of 
motion and reaction that they are, and of certain others 
that they are not, a sign of the presence of life. The 
word life, then, differs from words like ‘oscillation’ or 
‘rebound’ in that it 1s not a name that we bestow on a 
particular type of motion or reaction; it is a cause which 
we assume to be capable of accounting for them. More 
than that, it is not a cause assumed to exist, though in 
itself unknown; it is not some hypothetical entity which 
might just as well be called x; it is something the nature 
of which is taken for granted to be a matter of familiar 
knowledge. 

But how and why is it that I can take for granted 
as being something perfectly familiar a mysterious entity 
which no one has ever seen, heard, touched, measured 
or weighed? | 

The answer is plain. I do this because I have direct 
experience within myself of this mysterious something; 
I feel it rather than know it, and I take for granted 
that every one else has knowledge of it in exactly the 
same way. But this means that when I say a thing 
is alive, I am accounting for its motions and reactions 
on the hypothesis that they are caused by, and are the 
expression of, an indwelling, active, sensitive principle 
similar to the life principle as I know it in myself.’ 
Whenever, therefore, I speak of ‘life’, I am interpreting 
the observed facts of ‘behaviour’ in the light of an 
inward experience of my own; I am reading something 
of myself into the phenomena I study. I am projecting 
myself into the facts I observe. 

Is this legitimate? My reply is that the legitimacy 


* For the purpose of the present argument I can ignore the, in some 
contexts important, distinction between life and conscious life. 


100 REALITY CHAP. 


of this method of interpretation 1s something which I 
put to the test of experiment all day and every day 
in my dealings with my fellow-men; and I find that 
as a rule the experiment works. Human intercourse 
depends entirely on the supposition that I can approxi- 
mately interpret the words, looks, actions of other men 
as being the expression of feelings and intentions more 
or less similar to those which I should myself express 
by similar words, looks or actions. Interpreting the 
gestures of a man upon whose corn I have trodden in 
a ’bus in the light of a feeling of anger which similar 
experiences have called forth in myself, I say he is 
angry—and I adopt protective measures. And very 
disagreeable consequences may ensue unless I am ready 
on occasion to apply the same process of interpretation 
to the gestures of a dog,—making due allowances for 
the difference, while noting the resemblance, between a 
dog and a man. And, with a larger allowance for the 
extent of the difference, the same principle applies to 
our interpretation of the activities of living creatures 
still lower in the scale. 

Life in the last resort is a thing that I can only 
apprehend from within. My belief that other human 
beings, and the lower animals, have within them some- 
thing of the same kind is an inference. Some of the 
followers of Descartes held that in the case of the lower 
animals the inference was illegitimate. Animals to 
them were mere machines, the cry of a trapped hare was 
merely the noise of breaking machinery. But of that 
absurdity Darwinism has made an end. Sensation, 
conation and cognition obviously exist in the lower 
animals, though at a very much lower degree of intensity 
than in man, even perhaps approximating to zero in 
the simplest forms of living organism. But no hard- 


IV TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 101 


and-fast line can be drawn. It is this fact of continuity 
that obliges us to give the name ‘life’ to the active 
creative organising principle throughout the realm of 
living organisms; otherwise we should do better to call 
it x. But we do not, and we ought not to, call it 2; 
for this principle is not an unknown quantity; it is 
something which, though eluding knowledge in the sense 
in which Science uses that term, is yet more familiar 
to us than all our scientific knowledge. 

The conception of life is one with which sciences 
like Biology and Physiology cannot possibly dispense; 
but the point I would emphasise is that it is a conception 
which is unavoidably anthropomorphic." If I say that 
a man is alive, I assert that he has in a full sense what 
in myself I call by the name ‘life’; if I say an animal is 
alive, I assert that it has the same thing but in an 
attenuated form; if I say so of a tree, I affirm the 
possession of the same thing but in a still more 
attenuated form; and if I did not mean the word life to 
be understood in that anthropomorphic sense, I ought to 
call it simply x. But not only does the conception of 
life, when applied to the animal, mean life as I know it 
from within myself, though with a big but undefined 
minus quality understood; the same thing holds good of 
terms like hunger, fear, sex, struggle, and the like, which 
again are terms that Physiology and Biology cannot 
avoid using. Such terms have no meaning unless used 
with the implication that they describe emotional 
‘urges’ resembling more or less the corresponding ele- 
ments in human experience. 

The suggestion that up to a point the Biological 


1 By derivation the word ‘anthropomorphism’ means depicting the 
Divine in human form. Modern usage has extended the meaning to 
cover the attribution, to anything in the external world of any quality 
of which our knowledge is derived from human experience. 


102 RHALITY. CHAP. 


Sciences must be anthropomorphic is one which some 
exponents of these studies may hotly repudiate. But 
why? Two centuries ago anthropomorphism of an 
uncritical character was a danger to scientific method. 
To-day the danger seems rather to arise from undue 
anxiety to avoid it. Once the necessity of anthropo- 
morphic conceptions is openly admitted it is possible 
to guard against their being wrongly applied. Deny 
their necessity and you find you are using them unawares, 
and, therefore, without the necessary precautions. | 

I would venture to suggest to those who are expert 
in the Vital Sciences that as a mere matter of fact they 
are actually in the habit of approaching the subject- 
matter of these sciences from two opposite sides. On 
the one hand they make use of the methods of pure 
science, classification, analysis, reduction of facts to 
uniform law, and thereby they reveal the ‘mechanism’ 
of the organism and its evolution. On the other hand, 
whenever they speak of the ‘struggle for existence’, or 
of hunger, sex and the like, they are actually using 
a method of intuitive interpretation, which reads into 
and explains the observed phenomena in the light of 
the thing called life. They cannot avoid using both 
the conception of mechanism and that of life; but of 
these conceptions the one is reached by generalisation 
from external observation, the other is derived from 
human experience. Thus the Biologist and Physiologist, 
I maintain, are like the man who, in order to explain 
Venice to his friend, used both the scientific plan in 
Baedeker and the creative interpretation of a Turner 
picture. And I maintain that they are right in using 
both; for the object of the scientist is to advance knowl- 
edge, not merely to keep inside a set of rules to which 
the name ‘pure science’ may be applied. 


Iv TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 103 


PsycHOLOGY 


In Psychology, and still more in History, the fact 
of this double approach—which I may call scientific 
and intuitive—is still more in evidence. The aim of 
Psychology is to discover the mechanism of conation, 
emotion and reflection, and so far as possible to reduce 
to the uniformity of scientific law particular types of 
mental reaction. In this it has had considerable success. 
One result of this has been to discredit the use of 
pure introspection in Psychology, all the more since a 
scientific explanation 1s now forthcoming of that capacity 
for self-deception which the cynic in all ages has delighted 
to detect in human nature—in other people. It has 
been shown, for example, that a person may sincerely 
believe himself to be actuated by a motive directly con- 
trary in character to the ‘repressed’ desire by which his 
conduct is really determined. 

Some people, however, by a curious confusion of 
thought, have deduced from this discovery the conclu- 
sion that Psychology can cease to be anthropomorphic 
in the sense that it need no longer employ concepts 
derived from human feelings, desires, motives, as these 
are known from introspection. The fallacy is obvious. 
Suppose, for example, that the psychologist detects that 
a person who thinks himself exceptionally humble is 
really, without knowing it, inordinately conceited; what 
he is doing is to ascribe his conduct to its actual, instead 
of to its imaginary, motive. But neither the real nor 
the imaginary motive could be discussed apart from 
introspective interpretation of human feeling; and if 
nobody ever correctly interpreted his own feeling, there 
could be no difference between real and imaginary 
motives, so that the psychologist would have no basis 


104 REALITY CHAP. 


from which to start. The psychologist, far more than 
the physiologist, is bound to work with conceptions the 
meaning of which is derived from inward experience. 

In Psychology we can see more clearly than in any 
other of the Vital Sciences the necessity of combining 
mechanistic and anthropomorphic methods of interpreta- 
tion. Vital experience is essentially fluid. But knowl- 
edge, whether popular or scientific—since from its own 
nature it must analyse and classify—is compelled to treat 
everything it surveys as definite and static. A psychol- 
ogist cannot get very far without using the conception 
of libido or ‘desire’. But ‘desire,’ when it appears on the 
page of a scientific treatise, has become an abstract men- 
tal concept, it is no longer a throbbing experience. The 
word has the same sort of relation to the experience as a 
twenty-frane note has to a golden louis; it is a symbol 
which by a useful convention will be accepted as equiv- 
alent—so long as the exchange remains at par. But 
we are apt to forget that, as between words and things, 
the exchange is never exactly at par, and is least often 
so where the things are most alive. It follows that the 
technical terms used by the psychologist to describe the 
inner activities of the living spirit, in proportion as they 
profess to approximate to the exactitude of the ter- 
minology used in the pure sciences, misrepresent the 
activity of which they strive to be an objective expres- 
sion. This brings us up against the centre of our 
problem. The reflective intellect cannot make scientific 
use of any material unless it can present it to itself for 
study as if it were a static and exactly definable object. 
Vital experience, then, can be utilised for scientific 
purposes only in so far as it can be conceptualised in 
this way in technical terms assumed to have a definite 
and static content. But the moment it is forgotten that 


IV TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 105 


every such conceptualisation is up to a point a mis- 
representation, the study becomes pseudo-scientific. 
Everybody who has felt deeply knows that only in the 
shallows of experience can the inner quality of life be 
expressed in words. Intense life transcends exact 
expression. But though its quality cannot be expressed, 
it may be suggested—by a gesture, a look, a poem, a 
tune. But then only a person with the requisite power 
of sympathetic appreciation can understand. Concep- 
tual knowledge is inadequate to compass life. 

This is the explanation of the fact so often noted that 
book-knowledge of the laws of Psychology, or of the 
technique of method, is of very little use to the physician 
unless he has an inner sympathy with the subtleties of 
mood and feeling over a wide range of human experience. 
It frequently happens that a patient with whom one 
practitioner can do nothing, is easily cured by another 
who, generally speaking, is in no way his superior, simply 
because the one has, and the other has not, a tempera- 
ment sympathetic to this particular patient. Sympathy 
is the capacity to understand the inner feelings of others 
by analogy (but it must be the right analogy) to feelings 
one has experienced oneself. It is the most anthropo- 
morphic of all methods of interpretation. And to the 
practising psychotherapist both sympathy and scientific 
knowledge are equally essential. A psychologist to be 
successful must be a man who has something of that 
imaginative insight into the subtleties of human motive 
and character which are required to make a good novelist, 
along with the mastery of abstract law and principle 
which belong to the scientist’s equipment. In other 
words, the psychologist is compelled at one and the 
same time to conceive of his subject-matter anthropo- 
morphically and mechanistically. And any theory of 


106 REALITY CHAP. 


the nature of Psychology which does not recognise this 
fact of therapeutical experience is ipso facto condemned 
as an academic abstraction. 

One school of psychologists, the Behaviourists, in 
order to avoid what they regard as the slur of anthropo- 
morphism, try to rule out from the sphere of Psychology 
everything but behaviour, 2.e. what can be externally 
observed. To do this, of course, they are compelled 
to adopt the determinist assumption that behaviour is 
never in any way affected by the thought, desire or will 
of the actor—a reductio ad absurdum of which enough 
has been already said. It is, however, commonly over- 
looked by those who criticise and dissent from this school 
that the Behaviourist position is the only possible one, 
so long as it is assumed that no knowledge is valid unless 
it is reached by the methods of pure science. But in 
practice no psychotherapist—whatever his theory—is a 
Behaviourist. I mean that in actually treating a patient 
his procedure is one which quite clearly involves a happy 
combination of the methods of pure science with anthro- 
pomorphically interpretative intuition. And his practical 
success in the curing of disease is presumptive evidence ~ 
that this procedure is legitimate. 

But modern Psychology not only makes use of an 
anthropomorphic method of interpretation forbidden by 
pure science, it also—except in that special depart- 
ment technically known as Experimental Psychology— 
to a large extent dispenses with something which for the 
physicist is absolutely fundamental, viz., measurement. 
I remember, at the International Congress of Psychology 
at Oxford in 1923, this point being raised in an impressive 
way by an eminent scientist present as a visitor, who 
expressed a grave misgiving whether, until and unless 
some standard of measurement could be found, Psychol- 


1V TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 107 


ogy could be regarded as a branch of Science at all. 
But, assuming the misgiving to be justified, what 
follows? If Psychology is not allowed to rank as a 
branch of Science, it can certainly claim to be a branch 
of knowledge—and that means that knowledge is a much 
wider thing than ‘pure’ science, and that important 
elements in Reality will be ignored unless we are 
prepared overtly and frankly to employ another method 
of interpretation. 

And this other method is one which, unlike those 
used by pure science, can take cognizance of Quality. 


-History AND EvERYDAY LIFE 


The necessity of operating by a two-fold method of 
knowledge is no less strikingly apparent in the study of 
History. History for the last century or so has prided 
itself on being a branch of Science. In so far as the 
historian collects facts, detects sequences of cause and 
effect, or discovers social laws or tendencies, he is using 
the methods of Science. But if he aspires to give his 
readers a living picture, say, of a great statesman or 
of the course of a revolution, he must also become an 
artist. For that statesman was a highly vitalised 
character, that revolution was a torrential expression of 
living hopes and passions. Unless the historian can 
somehow make this clear he has misrepresented the 
actualities of what he professes to record. If he would 
avoid giving a false impression of reality, he must 
interpret, by his imaginative insight into personality 
and its workings, the detailed facts he has collected, 
tested and arranged by the methods of Science. The 
task is difficult: it is very easy to misunderstand the 
feelings and to misinterpret the motives of a brother or 
a wife; how much more so those of men and multitudes 


108 REALITY CHAP. 


in a bygone age. But the historian who declines to risk 
that failure has already failed. The great historian, 
like the successful psychotherapist, is the man who is 
master of the methods of Science and also of the method 
of the imaginative interpretation of personality—and 
knows how to check the results of each method by those 
of the other. 

Exactly the same holds good of everyday life. In 
dealing with things material we apply methods of 
observation, classification and analysis which are a rule- 
of-thumb equivalent of those of Science; but persons— 
and animals, too, for that matter—can only be dealt with 
if we to some extent understand them from within; we 
must know or guess something of their character and 
motives. No man ever erected a big business, or 
organised and led to victory an army, unless he had, 
besides a gift for figures, facts and system, some knowl- 
- edge of the hearts of men. To the scientist’s power 
of grasping and manipulating things, he must add, to 
however small a degree, something of the artist’s insight 
into character, that is, into the inner quality of life. 
But neither of these will suffice alone. And if anyone 
is under the impression that it is only when dealing 
with human beings that this combination of methods is 
required, let him talk to a trainer of race-horses or to 
the huntsman of the nearest pack of hounds—and he 
will find out his mistake. 


RELIGION AS KNOWLEDGE 
Art, we have already seen (p. 34), is, or rather can 
be utilised as, a form of knowledge in so far as in it 
life has objectified its own inner quality. But Art is 
indifferent to the historical or scientific interpretation 
of Reality. There is, I understand, adequate evidence 


IV TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 109 


that there was in Denmark a prince whose name was 
Hamlet; but if the contrary were to be proved, that 
would not make the slightest difference to the value of 
the play. Again, Art is the expression of only one 
aspect of the inner quality of life, viz., that specific 
kind of interest which we call esthetic and which may 
be defined as the appreciation of beauty, provided the 
term beauty be stretched to cover also the grotesque 
and the bizarre. 

Religion, like Art, objectifies an inner quality of life; 
but it differs from Art in that the life it would interpret 
is conceived to be an expression of, dependent upon, or 
in some special rapport with, a Life other and more than 
human. Its range of interest, therefore, is wider than 
that of Art; and it is profoundly concerned with the 
objective character of that larger Life which (and whose 
contact with ours) it endeavours to interpret. Religion, 
therefore, must postulate the existence of a ‘not-ourselves’ 
that is alive. In the next chapter I shall endeavour to 
show that the postulate is justified. But if it once be 
granted that such a larger Life exists, that Life must 
be supposed to have effects upon the phenomenal world 
which Science studies. Hence the myths and other forms 
in which Religion tries to body forth its intuitions must 
always submit to cross-examination in the light of scien- 
tific knowledge. 

It would seem, then, that Religion, considered as 
a means of Knowledge, must, like Psychology and 
History, make use of both the alternative ways of 
knowledge—only in the reverse order. Psychology, start- 
ing with the conceptions of mechanism and law, which 
are the basis of Physics and Chemistry, finds itself com- 
pelled to supplement these with conceptions like will, 
desire, thought, which we have seen to be necessarily 


110 REALITY CHAP. 


anthropomorphic. Religion, on the other hand, starts 
with the method of anthropomorphic intuition, but is 
compelled, on pain of degenerating into superstition, to 
check results so reached by reference to facts and laws 
of the purely scientific order. 


CoNCLUSION 


To sum up. Our analysis of the nature of knowledge 
points to two conclusions. | 

(1) The methods of classification, analysis and 
reduction to law as used in pure Science can only take 
us part of the way wherever life occurs, and the higher 
the type of living organism the more this inadequacy 
becomes important. If, then, the Universe is the 
expression of anything resembling Life—whether con- 
sclous or purblind—it would seem that It can only be 
understood in a very one-sided and partial way, so long 
as we confine ourselves to the methods of pure Science. 

(2) That being so, we are bound to ask whether, by 
a right use of the direct acquaintance which we have 
with life as experienced within ourselves, we can supple- 
ment the deficiencies of the methods of pure Science? 
We are compelled, at least by way of experiment, to test 
the possibility of making up for the inadequacy of the 
purely scientific method by a method of approach which 
is frankly anthropomorphic. But—and the reservation 
is of vital importance—not just any kind of anthropo- 
morphism can serve our purpose. It must be anthropo- 
morphism with its necessary limitations clearly faced, 
and its results checked and counterchecked on truly 
scientific principles, so that what is reached by 
anthropomorphic intuition is continually supplemented, 
and at every point controlled, by the methods of pure 
Science. 


IV TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 111 
Mr. J. B. S. Haldane* ventures on the prophecy, 


A time will come (as I believe) when physiology will 
invade and destroy mathematical physics, as the latter has 
destroyed geometry. The basic metaphysical working 
hypothesis of science and practical life will, then, I think, be 
something like Bergsonian activism. 


I do not lke this way of putting it The sciences 
will not invade and destroy one another. They will 
rather unite to invade the Unknown, attacking positions 
now from the side of the conceptions of physics, now from 
that of the nature of life. Mechanism and anthropo- 
morphism will be check and countercheck to one another, 
as is already the case, if not yet in the Vital Sciences, 
most clearly in Psychology. The basic metaphysical 
working hypothesis of Science and practical life will then 
be the recognition of the fact that Life, in the sense of 
conscious Life, is the fundamental element in Reality. 
But that means that quality, as well as quantity, is an 
aspect of Reality, for consciousness implies the appre- 
hension of quality. If Life is real, value in some form 
or other must be real also; for implicit in the will to 
live is the unexpressed assumption that it is worth 
while—an assumption for ever challenged by the fact 
of pain. 


ADDITIONAL NOTES 
A. INSPIRATION 


I HAVE argued that myth, rite and sacred book are externalisa- 
tions of an inward spirit, having much the same relation to the 
spirit of the religious community or of the individual religious 
genius, as the work of art has to the spirit of the artist. In the 
great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Mohammedanism and 


1 Daedalus, p. 15. (Kegan Paul, 1924.) 


112 REALITY CHAP. 


Christianity, this fact is half-recognised, and at the same time 
half-obscured, in the doctrine of ‘Inspiration’, The spirit 
which speaks by the prophets is affirmed to be the Spirit of 
God; and, in Christianity, this same Spirit is held to dwell in 
the religious community, finding expression, not only in a spe- 
cial quality of personal life—characterised by love, joy, 
peace, etc.—but also in rites and creed. Unfortunately, how- 
ever, the influence of the Divine Spirit upon the personality of 
the prophet (or of persons held to be the mouthpieces of the 
corporate spirit of the community) has commonly been pic- 
tured as if it were a mechanical contact between two sub- 
stances essentially disparate. Had inspiration been conceived 
as that which causes an elevation and intensification of a 
human life enabling it to experience and to express something 
of the quality of that larger Life on which it is dependent, no 
one would ever have expected the Biblical writers to be better 
informed than their contemporaries on matters of History or 
Science; and the world would have been spared a long and 
unprofitable wrangle between Religion and Science. 

Inspiration I am inclined to define as an enhanced percep- 
tion of higher values accompanied by the gift of effectively 
communicating this to others. ‘The test of Inspiration’, it 
has been well said, ‘is the power to inspire’. 


B. Kant’s THeory oF KNOWLEDGE 


THR classical exposition of the conception that there are two 
different, and fundamentally disparate, ways of knowledge is, 
of course, that of Immanuel Kant. Such is his importance in 
the history of thought that any one who would advocate any 
distinction of this kind is almost bound to give some indication 
of how far the position he maintains is identical with, or dif- 
fers from, that of Kant. Kant drew a hard-and-fast line 
between two different operations of the mind which he called 
the Pure, and the Practical, Reason, and between the objects 
of which respectively they have cognisance. The Pure Reason 
apprehends in accordance with categories or principles of 
understanding, which find their classical expression in Mathe- 
matics and Physics. But what the Pure Reason so apprehends 
is not Ultimate Reality but only Phenomena; that is to say, 
Reality in the guise, and under the form, of the system of 


IV TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE 113 


mutual relations, in which (our minds being constituted as 
they are) It must necessarily appear to us. Ultimate Reality 
(the Noumenon or the Thing in Itself as he calls it) is 
assumed, not only to be different in kind from things as they 
are known to us, but also to be intrinsically unknowable by 
our purely intellectual faculties. Nevertheless, this Ultimate 
Reality is known to us, but in a non-intellectual, or (as we 
might put it) in an intuitive, way, by what he calls the Prac- 
tical Reason, that is, the faculty which apprehends in its 
inner quality the moral judgment. To explain the exact place 
of the esthetic judgment in Kant’s system would entail a long 
and subtle disquisition; it will suffice to say that he thought of 
it as having a relation to Ultimate Reality which is in a certain 
sense analogous to that of the moral judgment. 

The system of Kant gave a clear answer to the question, Is 
value an illusion? or (as I have preferred to state it) Is 
quality a constituent of Reality? Science deals only with 
quantity, but Science, in Kant’s view, is limited to knowledge 
of Phenomena. Quality is known by an apprehension, which 
is not knowledge at all in the intellectualistic sense, of the 
Noumenon, that is, of what Kant regarded as something more 
real than Phenomena. The still small voice of conscience and 
the sense of beauty are direct messages from the incognoscible 
Beyond. 

Kant’s solution I will not venture to criticise in detail— 
impar congressus Achilli. But I will again quote Mr. Bertrand 
Russell. ‘Kant’s system is intimately bound up with the state 
of the exact sciences in his day. . . . Now that geometry has 
become non-Euclidean and logic non-Aristotelian, Kant’s 
arguments require restatement; to what extent this is possible, 
is still a moot point.’* I would add to this that (1) Kant 
accepted the view current in his day that the laws of 
Astronomy and Physics had that character of necessity which 
modern thought will only allow to Mathematics (p. 272); 
(2) Biology, Physiology and Psychology, as we understand 
them, have been born since Kant. These, I think, must affect 
philosophical thinking more than I gather Mr. Russell is 
inclined to allow. 

The distinction which in this chapter I have been trying to 

* In Lange’s History of Materialism, p. vii., E.T. (Kegan Paul, 1925.) 


114 REALITY CHAP. IV 


adumbrate between two ways of knowledge is not the same 
as that proposed by Kant, but it is to a certain extent analo- 
gous. Not by way of criticism of his position, but in order 
to explicate my own, I will compare the two. 

(1) By maintaining that the Pure Reason can only deal 
with ‘Phenomena’, Kant altogether denied to Science any 
knowledge of Reality. The view that the conceptual type of 
knowledge, of which the science of Physics is the most perfect 
expression, is a ‘representation’, having the same kind of rela- 
tion to Reality as a ground-plan to a house, does not shut us 
up to that conclusion. 

(2) I am more venturesome than Kant in virtually sub- 
stituting for the intrinsically unknowable Noumenon of his 
system the conception of Life,* or rather of Conscious Life. 

(3) With Kant I should hold that in the categorical 
imperative of the voice of conscience and in the appreciation 
of the beautiful we are directly cognisant of the quality of 
Reality. But, while Kant concerns himself with these as 
known in internal feeling, my emphasis is on the fact that Art 
and Religion are attempts of Life to erxternalise its conscious- 
ness of its own inner quality. Thus I argue that, by a proper 
use of these externalisations, the individual may enter into a 
wider and deeper appreciation of the quality of Reality than 
on Kant’s somewhat individualistic view would seem possible, 
and may thus soar far beyond the narrow limits of his own 
experience. 

(4) Kant maintained that the qualitative character of 
Reality is known to us mainly through the ‘categorical 
imperative’ of Ethics. I seek it, in the first mstance, in the 
objectifications of the inner spirit of Religion. 


* Schopenhauer in his own way did this, only calling it Will; and he 
argued that in doing so he was making clear what Kant really meant. 


Vv 


THE LIFE-FORCE, THE ABSOLUTE, OR GOD 


115 


THE LIFE-FORCE, THE ABSOLUTE, OR GOD 
SYNOPSIS 


Tue Lire-Force 


Bergson’s conception of ‘Creative Evolution’ has popularised the idea 
that the Universe is the expression of an indwelling ‘Life-Force’. 

This is an advance on Materialism in three ways: 

(1) It explains all that Materialism explains, and more also. 

(2) It indicates a dynamic ‘urge’ capable of setting in motion, so to 
speak, the mechanism which Science reveals. 

(3) It explains by means of a vera causa. Life is an organising 
principle; and it is the only known one. The Universe is a system, and 
therefore requires some organising principle to explain it. 

But, if we are to think of Reality in terms of Life, we must decide 
whether the conception of life we use is derived from the vegetable, the 
animal, or the human world. 

Three reasons for declining to take as our norm life the ‘simplest’ 
form of life. 

(1) Life in its lowest form is unknown, and perhaps undiscoverable. 

(2) Life in itself (as distinguished from the material organism in 
which it is manifested) must be estimated qualitatively and in terms, 
not of complexity, but of intensity. 

(3) To attempt to explain the higher forms of life in terms of the 
lower would be to repeat the error of Materialism-—but with less plausi- 
bility. The nature of life cannot be understood until it is studied in its 
last and richest development, that Is, in man. 

The popular conception of the Life-Force—a kind of ‘half-way house’ 
between Materialism and Theism. This is untenable. The sole diffi- 
culty in accepting Theism is the existence of evil. 


THE ABSOLUTE 
The argument of the Idealist school of Philosophy from the fact that 


the Universe is an intelligible system to the existence of a Supreme — 


Intelligence. But is there any reason to believe that intelligence can 
exist except concomitantly with feeling and will? 

In Greek, Indian and European thought the conception of the Abso- 
lute has found classical expression in various ways. Some of these are 
open to grave objection. 


116 


Brief remarks upon the view that (1) God can only be described by 
negatives; (2) Divine Perfection involves motionless impassibility ; 
(3) Eternity implies that all things are determined, and the only 
activity of the Divine is intellectual contemplation. 

If the Idealist doctrine that the Universe is the expression of Mind 
could be fused with a more or less Bergsonian conception of a Life- 
Force, the result would be something very like the vision of the Hebrew 
prophet—a Living God. 


Gop 


The naive anthropomorphism of primitive religion (and science) has 
ceased to be a danger; reaction against it has gone too far. To reach 
a true conception of Reality we must make the fullest use of both the 
ways of knowledge discussed in the last chapter—the way of pure 
Science and the way of interpretation in terms of life. 

Frankly, this means personification. But to ascribe personality to the 
Power behind phenomena is not so absurd as at first sight appears. The 
essential element in personality is quality; to its ‘greatness’ considera- 
tions of size or ‘foot-pounds’ are simply irrelevant. Thus, supposing 
there is adequate reason to believe that love exists at all in the Ultimate, 
there is nothing absurd in equating the quality of that love with that 
shown in the character of Christ. 

We must even go so far as to ascribe to the Divine personality some- 
thing of that concrete synthetic character to which we give the name 
Individuality. 

The danger of making God in the image of man. This only avoided 
if we select for the purpose the Ideal Man. 

Answer to the objection that while personality implies variability, 
the Universe is the expression of a reign of law. 

Is ‘supra-personal’ a better word than personal to apply to God? 

The fallacy in Pantheism. 

The Anthropomorphism of Jesus. 


117 


o* 


V 
THE LIFE-FORCH, THE ABSOLUTE, OR GOD 


In the beginning was It—the infinite Unknown out of 
which have come, in which subsist, all things that are. 
In Ir I live and move and have my being; and before 
Its immensity and mystery I stand dumbfoundered— 
abashed, but questioning. 

In the beginning was Ir. Or, instead of It, should 
I have written Hn? . . . That is the question. 


Tue Lire-Force 


Bergson has compelled attention to. the grand 
hypothesis of Creative Evolution—the expression of the 
ceaseless ‘urge’ of an élan vital or Life-Force ever finding 
its outlet in fresh experiment. On this view the indi- 
vidual living creature is also, on a small scale and in a 
derivative way, a focal centre of creation, a tiny taper, 
as it were, burning by its own flame, but lit from the uni- 
versal bonfire. Largely through the influence of Bergson, 
the conception of the ‘Life-Force’ seems to be stepping 
into the place once occupied by Scientific Materialism 
in the popular semi-scientific thinking of to-day. 

Into the details of the system of Bergson or his 
followers I do not propose to enter. But any philosophy 
which explains the Universe in terms of Life has certain 
conspicuous advantages. 

(1) A Life-Force hypothesis will explain everything 
that Materialism tried to explain and more also. Life, 

118 


CHAP. V THE LIFE-FORCE 119 


as we know it, works only in and through the mechanism 
of living organisms. A living organism is a machine, 
with a difference. 


For certain purposes it is not amiss to think of. the 
organism as an engine, but it is a self-stoking, self-repairing, 
self-preservative, self-adjusting, self-increasing, self-producing 
engine.* 


Conceive Ultimate Reality, not as a Machine, but as 
an Organism, and you have explained everything in the 
Universe which resembles a machine—and some other 
things as well. Life will account for the thing we call 
mechanism, but mechanism will not easily account for 
the thing we call life. 

(2) The élan vital expressed in evolution is dynamic; 
it 1s creative. Darwin, Mendel and others have dis- 
covered something of the mechanism by which Creative 
Evolution works, but without the Will to live, without, 
that is, an inward onward urge, the mechanism could 
never have come into action. 

(3) A ‘Life-force’ hypothesis satisfies Newton’s 
demand for a vera causa; that is to say, it explains the 
fact that the Universe is a coherent system by referring 
it to a cause the existence of which is actually known. 
It is a first principle of science that, if a set of phenomena 
can be adequately accounted for by a known cause, it is 
idle to seek for an unknown. Now life is a known cause, 
and it is one which will adequately explain the coherence 
of the Universe—and no other known cause will do so. 

This last point is one that I must develop further. 
In our more melancholy moments we are apt to compare 
life to the flame of a candle. No analogy could be 


+ J. A. Thomson, The System of Animate Nature, vol. i. p. 157. 
(Williams and Norgate, 1920.) 


120 REALITY CHAP. 


more misleading. Flame is a visible accompaniment 
of the dissolution of the thing that burns, life 1s that 
which prevents the dissolution of the organism by con- 
stantly repairing loss: more than that, it is the thing 
which has actually built it up. The human body, the 
most complex of living organisms, stars from the con- 
junction of two microscopic cells. It becomes what it 
does solely by virtue of the fact that the principle of life 
within is at every stage selecting from the environment, 
transmuting, and so incorporating into its own substance, 
matter originally alien to itself. Life is a principle of 
organisation; and it is that, not only in the way in which 
the plan of a building or the design of an engine may 
be said to exhibit the principle on which the various 
parts are arranged so as to form a single whole; it is 
the active agent in bringing into being the whole so 
organised. Life is architect and workman both. And 
it not only brings into existence; it also keeps in repair. 
It is creative, preservative, curative. I have already 
had occasion (p. 90) to tilt against the notion of the 
Universal Life as a sort of fluid, the ‘ocean of life’, or 
as a kind of all-pervading ‘atmosphere’ which all sentient 
creatures breathe. Life is an active organising principle; 
it ‘pervades’ indeed the whole of an organism, but it does 
so, not as an atmosphere, but as a synthetic, directing 
and controlling power. Again, not only is Life a prin- 
ciple of synthesis and organisation, but Life—and Mind, 
which is a function of Life—is the only such principle of 
which we have any knowledge. 

Now the Universe, whatever else it is, is an organised 
system; otherwise the elaborate structure of knowledge 
we call Science would be a cloud castle of the human 
mind having no correspondence with Reality. And 
as Life is a thing that exists in the Universe, and as it is 


v THE LIFE-FORCE 121 


also the only principle of synthesis and organisation 
which we can anywhere detect, the hypothesis that 
Life is (or, at least, is a representative expression of) the 
synthetic, organising, controlling principle in the 
Universe is of all hypotheses so far propounded the 
most completely scientific. On this hypothesis the driv- 
ing power behind the Universe is thought of, not as a 
dead, wholly unconscious, force comparable to an electric 
current, but as all-pervading Life. The totality of things 
is pictured no longer as a machine, but as an organism. 
The Universe becomes alive. 


This sounds a much more promising solution of the 
riddle than the Materialism which it is at present in 
the process of superseding in the popular mind. But 
at once it raises one searching question. If the Ultimate 
Reality is to be thought of in terms of life, What kind 
of life? For life is known to us in various forms. 

There is life at the simplest vegetable stage; there 
is that freer, more intense, and, it would seem, more 
characteristic form of it shown in the conscious but 
unreflective life of the animal; and there is life as it 
appears, in an infinitely richer form, in the mind of 
man. 

If we have given up the attempt to conceive the 
Universe in terms of dead matter and dead energy, 
and are asking if it can be explained in terms of life, 
the first question we have to raise is, Which of these 
manifestations of life are we to select as our type— 
the simplest, or the richest? The old Materialism 
selected the simplest kind of force we can imagine—force, 
that is, of the dead mechanical type, like gravitation 
or electricity as these are popularly conceived. If the 
attempt to explain the Universe in terms of that has 


122 REALITY CHAP. 


broken down, ought we then to try the kind of force 
which seems next simplest—z.e. unconscious life as it 
appears in the vegetable kingdom—and to say that the 
creative principle is a blindly groping Life-force? 

I submit that this procedure, though at first sight 
the most obvious, is radically unsound for three main 
reasons. 


(1) Life in its lowest form is an unknown quantity. 

(a) We only really know life as it exists in ourselves. 
Life as it exists in the animal, or vegetable world is an 
entity the existence of which we postulate in order to 
explain certain effects, and which we assume to be a 
faint shadow of that conscious life we know of in our- 
selves. 

(b) The most primitive kind of living organism, the 
parent of all now-existing organisms, has either ceased 
to exist or has not yet been discovered. 

(c) If ever the gulf between organic and inorganic 
should be bridged, as is quite possible, Life and Energy 
may be shown to be continuous. 


(2) The adjectives ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ are appro- 
priate to describe the difference between a unicellular 
vegetable and a human being, considered merely as 
two different organisations of matter; they are not 
appropriate to describe the difference between the life 
which appears in the one and in the other. The human 
body can be analysed into an infinite number of con- 
stituent parts; not so the life that is in it. Numerically, 
so to speak, life is one. If we are to express the difference 
between the life manifested in the more complex and in 
the simpler types of organism we can only do so by 
using adjectives implying quality. The difference 
between life in man and in a vegetable is not that 


V THE LIFE-FORCE 123 


between ‘complicated’ and ‘simple’; it is the difference 
between ‘intense’ and ‘faint’, ‘vivid’ and ‘pallid’, 
‘vehement’ and ‘still’, ‘rich’ and ‘meagre’. 

(3) The failure of Materialism was at least a magnificent 
failure; it sought to explain the Universe as the expres- 
sion of force in the simplest form known.* To choose 
unconscious life, merely because it seems at the moment 
to be the next more simple, would be to repeat that 
error—but in a less plausible and attractive way. For 
in what did the error of Materialism consist? It con- 
sisted precisely in the fact that it took for granted that 
the simple is necessarily the explanation of the complex, 
and the earlier of the later. It saw that the body was 
a machine conforming to the laws of physics and 
mechanics; it assumed that it was only a machine. It 
saw that life was a force; it assumed that it was merely 
force. To assume that, because consciousness is life, it 
is merely life, is to repeat the fallacy. When or how 
life first appeared on this planet no man knows. Whether 
life is another manifestation of what physicists call 
energy, or whether it is a new thing superadded, is still 
uncertain. But the answer to these questions does not 
affect the present issue. If life is a manifestation of 
energy, then ‘energy’ must be something intrinsically 
richer than, and different in kind from, mechanical force 
as popularly conceived, or that abstract concept ‘energy’ 
with which physicist theory operates. If, on the other 
hand, life is a new thing, superadded at a certain stage 
of the physical evolution of matter, then the Universe 


1 Physicists (cf. p. 18) are now objecting to the use of the term 
‘force’ of things like gravitation or of the concept of ‘energy’. But as 
the position I am criticising depends for its plausibility on the accept- 
ance of the conceptions of ‘force’ and ‘energy’ in what is practically the 
popular usage of those words, I feel justified in conforming to that 
usage. 


124 REALITY » CHAP. 


is shewn to have contained from the beginning some- 
thing other than, and different in kind from, anything 
that had hitherto appeared on earth. In either case the 
nature of things, the real content of the Universe, is most 
likely to be deduced from a scrutiny of the nature of life. 

But we cannot stop short here. What I have just said 
of the relation of life and energy, applies equally to the 
relation between ‘life’ and ‘conscious life’. Those same 
considerations, which impel us to interpret. the Power 
behind things in terms of life rather than of mechanical 
force, impel us to do this in terms of life in its most 
intense form, as exhibited in the developed consciousness 
of man, rather than in the attenuated form in which it 
appears in the vegetable. The question whether any 
hard-and-fast line can be drawn between the manifesta- 
tions of life in the unconscious vegetable, in the conscious 
animal, and in the rational human, stage, is a much 
debated one. But, decide it how we will, we are left 
with a dilemma from which there is no escape. Either 
at each of these stages something new is superadded, in 
which case it follows that something in the Universe 
hitherto not seen on earth has just come into view; or 
we must say that what has become explicit in the later 
stage was already implicit though undeveloped in the 
earlier, in which ease life is essentially something richer, 
freer and altogether different from what we should have 
supposed had we nothing but the vegetable world in 
which to study it. The eagle was once no more than 
an egg; but what should we know of the meaning, pur- 
pose and nature of that egg if we had never seen the 
grown bird in its soaring splendour? Man is the last 
product of the immanent creative Life, but till he is 
studied, and that in his most perfect form, the nature of 
life is only half revealed. The real nature of a process, 


v THE LIFE-FORCE 125 


to use a formula as old as Aristotle, can only be under- 
stood by examining its highest product; and we shall miss 
the meaning of Creative Evolution unless we study the 
beginnings from the standpoint of the end achieved. 


I would urge, therefore, for the three reasons given 
above, that, once Materialism is given up, we are logically 
compelled to give the most serious consideration to the 
hypothesis that the Ultimate Reality is certainly no 
less (and, if that, probably far more) alive and fully 
conscious than the highest of its products of which we 
have any knowledge—the mind and heart of man. 

In the popular mind the conception of a Life-Force 
virtually ‘splits the difference’ between Materialism 
and Theism. I am not sure but that in Bergson’s own 
view the élan vital is a half-way house of this kind. At 
any rate to me the hypothesis of a Life-Force which is 
purposive but purblind (like the life observable in a tree 
or an amceba) seems neither plausible in itself nor to be 
borne out by the evidence. An hypothesis is plausible 
which purports to explain either the oak by the acorn, 
or the acorn by the oak; not so one that would explain 
both by the six-inch sapling. If the hypothesis of a 
Universal Life is demanded to explain the fact of life, 
then the hypothesis that in that Universal Life there is 
intelligence is required to explain the fact of reason. 

Materialism we found (p. 9) to be ‘mechano- 
morphism,’ and therefore, since machinery is a man-made 
thing, to be anthropomorphism at second hand. The con- 
ception of a purblind Life-Force—in that it likens the 
Power behind the Universe to life as it exists in the brute 
creation—might by analogy be styled ‘theriomorphism’; 
and since we only know brute life by inference from our 
own, theriomorphism also is anthropomorphism at 


126 REALITY CHAP. 


second hand. . Since, then, we must have anthropo- 
morphism, let it be at first hand; and if we apply the 
category of life to explain the Universe, let us start from 
life as 1t exists in man. Life can only be anthropomor- 
phically conceived; and if, lacking knowledge of any 
alternative explanation, we adopt the provisional 
hypothesis that Life is the principle of organisation of 
the Universe, we are forced to choose between two forms 
of that hypothesis. We must face the decision, Is the 
Universe more or less alive than ourselves? Which of 
these two hypotheses will best explain all the facts 
remains to be considered; but if life 7s the principle of 
organisation of the Universe, there is at least an a priori 
presumption that this Universal Life is as much more 
intense than life as it appears in man, as life in man is 
than life in an amceba. There are those who are prepared 
to maintain that man 1s greater than the Universe, since 
in him life is of a higher order than in It; but, I would 
urge, it is for them to prove their case. 

And they have a case. It can be summed up in a 
single word—Evil. As life becomes more intense, cogni- 
tion becomes more acute; purpose, therefore, becomes 
more fully conscious. If, then, the Life of the Whole 
is more intense than that of man, It must know more 
clearly than does man at what It is aiming and what 
It is actually effecting. It cannot but be cognisant of 
the world’s pain. Our problem, then, will not be solved 
till we have found either purpose in that pain, or remedy 
for it. 


THe ABSOLUTE 


It is impossible to avoid some reference to that classi- 
eal tradition in Philosophy, having a pedigree going back 
to Plato, which reigned in Oxford in my student days and 


V THE ABSOLUTE 127 


in which I first found an intellectual refuge from the 
Agnosticism which is a stage—both intellectually and 
morally, I think, a healthy stage—through which most 
men who think at all must pass. 

Philosophical Idealism has rarely made much appeal 
to men of Science; nor have its exponents ever succeeded 
in stating it in a way that is readily comprehensible to 
the plain man.” It has assumed so many phases that 
to profess to expound, would be as presumptuous as to 
criticise it in half a dozen pages. I prefer, therefore, to 
incur only the guilt of the lesser presumption of stating, 
without attempting to justify my contentions, (a) where 
it seems to me to be successful in establishing its main 
position, and (6) some objections to certain ideas which 
are, or have been, associated with the conception of 
the Absolute. But to any reader who has no previous 
acquaintance with Philosophy, I would suggest that, at 
a first reading of the book, he skip this section, and 
begin again on p. 133 with the section headed ‘Gon’. 

Fundamentally, Philosophical Idealism is based on an 
analysis of the presuppositions of thought. The Uni- 
verse is admittedly a system intelligible to thought— 
that follows, if from nothing else, from the fact that 
Science can foretell. It is argued that this would not be 
possible unless the system itself were the expression of 
Mind (p. 21). The argument has been acutely debated 
over a long period of years; nevertheless, in my opinion, 
it is one that so far has held out against all attempts to 
refute it. The conclusion that the Universe is the 
expression of Mind is one of which the importance cannot 
possibly be exaggerated. 

But the Idealist philosophers of the last century had 


+ Certain aspects of the argument are stated with admirable clarity 
by W. Temple, The Faith and Modern Thought, chap. 1. 


128 REALITY CHAP, 


formed their conception of the nature of thought and its 
place in the Universe mainly through reflection on the 
materials and methods of Sciences like Mathematics, 
Physics and Astronomy. <A very considerable change of 
emphasis is necessitated, if we turn towards the Bio- 
logical Sciences and especially to recent Psychology. 
Thought is now seen as a function of Life. As given us 
in experience, it is never separable from desire and will; 
and to think of the Universe as the expression of 
Creative Thought, is, I would submit, less happy than 
to think of Ir as the expression of Creative Life, that is, 
of Creative Desire and Creative Will, guided and 
informed by supreme Intelligence. This change of 
emphasis is of special importance in our approach to 
the concepts of Goodness and Beauty. Goodness and 
Beauty, to the unsophisticated observer, appear to be 
more closely related to will and desire than they are to 
abstract thought. Idealist philosophers have made 
heroic endeavours to substantiate the ultimate reality 
of Goodness and Beauty by making them objects 
of the Divine Contemplation; but the undue emphasis 
in their general system on the primacy of thought 
has made their arguments on this point, even if 
logically sound, psychologically a little unconvincing. 
Philosophers in this tradition very frequently tend 
to conceive of the Power behind Things as ‘The 
Absolute’. This conception, formulated as 7d 6yv or as 
Brahma, has behind it the prestige, not only of much 
of modern European, but also of Greek and of Indian, 
Philosophy. In a mitigated form it has succeeded in 
asserting itself in the writings of many Christian and 
Mohammedan Theologians whose orthodoxy is reckoned 
to be beyond dispute. Great systems of thought 
cannot be dismissed in an epigram or a paragraph; but, 


~~ 


v THE ABSOLUTE 129 


even at the risk of appearing to suffer from that delusion, 
I will set down the heads of some objections to the 
concept of The Absolute in the form in which that con- 
cept has often been understood. I must, however, add 
that very few, if any, now living representatives of the 
Idealist school hold it in precisely that form. 

(1) The doctrine that a true idea of God can only be 
arrived at by the way of negation appears to me to be 
a rather misleading way of stating something which, so 
far as it is true, is a truth of secondary importance. Of 
course no adjective or substantive can be predicated 
of the Divine in exactly its ordinary sense, for the simple 
reason that words were invented to fit, and derive 
their meaning from their appropriation to, the things 
of everyday life. But to admit this does not carry with 
it the admission that all we can say of God is that He 
is not this, and not that. I may speak of a prize-fighter 
as a powerful man; if I apply the same adjective to a 
Prime Minister I use it in a different sense; while if I 
speak of God as powerful, I use the word in yet another 
sense, but in one that is analogous. It is absurd to say 
that I must not ascribe power to God because His power 
is not of a kind and quality that operates by means of 
biceps or of rhetoric. 

(2) Curiously enough, a tradition of thought which 
has vigorously protested against describing God by posi- 
tive attributes has made an unfortunate exception in the 
case of the attribute ‘perfection’. It is argued that, 
since God is perfect, He must be absolutely incapable 
of change. Change may be either for the better or the 
worse; but what is already perfect cannot change for the 
better, while anything that can change for the worse 
must already have in itself some element of decay 
and therefore of imperfection This is very pretty 


130 REALITY CHAP. 


word-play, but it overlooks the fact that perfection is, 
as its derivation (7.e. completely finished) implies, a 
wholly static conception. A billiard ball may be (for 
practical purposes) a perfect sphere, the Venus de Milo 
may be a perfect work of art—but they are both dead. 
God is alive, and the essence of life is movement. Surely 
it would be a better analogy to liken God; not. to the 
perfect work of art, but to the perfect Artist. But 
if we do that, at once we think of Him as One who is 
always experiencing and always creating, ‘My Father 
worketh even until now, and I work’. And I would urge 
that, although we may hold that in the eternal experi- 
ence of God ‘death is swallowed up in victory’, yet His 
experience of suffering must somehow be real. Were 
the attitude of God towards the world’s sorrow and the 
world’s sin merely that of an unfeeling onlooker, then 
the ‘perfection’ which our theory saved would not be a 
moral one. 

(3) No competent thinker would ever have main- 
tained the view just criticised apart from a doctrine, 
which does, at first blush, seem to qualify, if not to rebut, 
the objections I have mentioned. The doctrine that the 
Ultimate Being is not subject to the time process has 
commended itself to the vast majority of idealist Philos- 
ophers and is deeply imbedded in Christian theology. 
It is only recently that it has become philosophically 
respectable to question it. To the consciousness of God, 
it is held, all things, past, present and to come, are 
simultaneously present, all co-exist in one Eternal Now. 
The Divine mind does not apprehend in terms of Time, 
but of Eternity—a word which does not mean a period 
of time infinitely extended in both directions, but abso- 
lute timelessness. 

To this view it is no valid objection that the concep- 


V THE ABSOLUTE a 


tion of Eternity is one that we cannot conceive; it 
would be strange if we could conceive the mode of being 
of the Infinite. But it is, I think, sometimes forgotten 
that from an inconceivable conception no logical conse- 
quence can properly be deducted. Thus from the verbal 
definition of Eternity it might seem logically to follow 
that all things are strictly determined. For if all things 
co-exist together in the mind of God, nothing that has 
been, is, or will be, could be otherwise than it is. To 
the audience at the cinema, pictures on the screen look 
like series of successive happenings, but on the film 
they were all there fixed and final. Eternity must not 
be so conceived. Nor again may it be inferred that the 
only activity left for God, in His changeless impassi- 
bility, is a ceaseless intellectual contemplation of His 
own infinite perfection. Aristotle’s contention that 
Bewetx, intellectual contemplation, is the sole oecupa- 
tion worthy of the gods implied a fine protest against 
taking seriously the grossness and puerility in the legends 
of the Greek deities. But it was a conception which 
could be alluring only so long as Ultimate Reality was 
conceived of in terms of pure intellect. It ceases to 
attract if, as modern thought impels us, we substitute 
life for pure intellect, and recognise that, in all living 
minds, feeling and will are concomitant with contem- 
plative thought. 

The philosophical conception of Eternity does, I 
readily admit, elude a number of difficulties which at 
once arise if we consider the ultimate nature of Time. 
It is obvious that Time cannot mean to God what it 
does to man. Even to Einstein it does not mean the 
same thing as it does to the man in the street. ‘A 
thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday’ is 
probably good metaphysics as well as noble poetry; 


132 REALITY CHAP. 


and the term Eternity is of great value as a symbol to 
remind us of the limitations of all our thought about 
Time. But if it is taken to be a clear-cut conception 
of the kind from which strict logic can draw conclusions, 
the use of the word becomes not a solution, but an 
evasion, of difficulties—and an apparent support for 
wrong notions about God. 


So far I have been mainly concerned to criticise 
conclusions of the more extreme Absolutist wing of the 
Idealist school; but, before leaving the subject, I would 
reiterate my own belief in the soundness of the Idealist 
argument from the intelligibility of things to an 
Intelligence behind them. The somewhat abstract intel- 
lectualism of the classical Idealism makes its world- 
view seem a trifle jejune beside a vivid Life-Force 
conception like that of Bergson; but its demonstration 
that it is a necessity of thought to postulate an ultimate 
Intelligence makes it a most valuable complement to, and 
corrective of, his philosophy. For this demonstration 
entirely disposes of the possibility, left open by Bergson, 
that the Life-Force may be only a purblind groping 
monster, a mere Will to live at best half-conscious of 
Its aims. If, then, we can correlate the principles for 
which Bergson and the Idealists respectively argue, in 
such a way that these will no longer conflict with but 
supplement one another, we reach a conception of the 
Universe as the expression of Desire and Will—but of 
rational Desire and intelligently directed Will. Idealist 
Philosophy has at times seemed to point us to a 
conception of the Reality behind Appearances as an 
Absolute of which nothing but negatives can be predi- 
cated—changeless, colourless, motionless, feelingless, and 
therefore, for all that is argued to the contrary, really 


y GOD 133 


dead. Creative Evolution, on the other hand, pictures 
a Universe really alive, but leaves us wondering how 
far the élan vital is, or is not, more than an aimless 
Will to live. Combine the two conceptions, and we are 
on the verge of that splendid concrete vision of the 
ancient Hebrew prophets—a Living God. 


Gop 


I anticipate that not a few of those who read this 
chapter will be conscious of a growing misgiving that 
they are being stealthily decoyed into an untenable 
Anthropomorphism, into a reversion to the standpoint 
of pre-scientific and pre-philosophic ages when man made 
God in his own image. By the simple savage or by 
half-civilised man this may be done with a good con- 
science, but we are the heirs of all the ages; noblesse 
oblige, intellectually at least we must be respectable! 

This particular misgiving is one which, if I am at 
liberty to quote my own experience, I may say that I 
have lived through and lived down. My reasons for this 
change of view are set out in the previous chapter. For 
the last century and more, educated men—in acute 
reaction against the Anthropomorphic Deism of popular 
Christianity—in speaking of the Ultimate Being have 
instinctively preferred to use words of an impersonal 
connotation, such as the Supreme Being, the Absolute, 
the All-Pervading, the Veiled Being, and the like. But 
in philosophy, as in politics, reaction against one extreme 
may easily result in another just as bad or, may be, 
even worse. The category of personality is not only 
religiously the most inspiring that we can apply to the 
Power behind the Universe, it is also intellectually the 
least inadequate. In olden days a crude anthropo- 
morphism was a danger to be feared; in our age what 


134 REALITY CHAP. 


the philosopher wants is the courage to advance further, 
and to advance more confidently, towards what, aban- 
doning all shamefacedness, I will style the Higher 
Anthropomorphism. 

So long as Materialism seemed to the majority of 
scientists to give an adequate account of the phenomena 
of life, consciousness could only be regarded as an 
‘epiphenomenon’—a curious and useless shadow cast 
by the solid substance of Reality. But, once we are 
driven by further observation of the facts of organic 
life—ineluding, of course, those studied by Psychology— 
to postulate something like a Life-Force behind the 
Universe, the case is altered. Those ‘bits’ of individuals, 
those aspects of the living mind which the generalisa- 
tions of physical science are bound to leave out of 
their purview, and also that inexplicable ‘individuality’ 
which even Psychology cannot include, must somehow 
or other be brought back upon the ledger before the 
final accounts are passed. The subtler qualities of life 
not only may, but must, be brought into consideration. 
Thought, feeling, the sense of value—things which 
cannot be seen, counted, or weighed—and that psychic 
entity we call individuality, may well turn out to be 
just those elements which will supply a key to the 
understanding of the Whole. It is not merely legiti- 
mate to bring these things in, it is illegitimate to leave 
them out. 

To reach a true conception of Reality we must, as we 
have seen (p. 110), combine in a single comprehensive 
scheme all that can be discovered along each of two 
different ways of knowledge. First comes the investiga- 
tion of the material Universe by the methods of pure 
Science. Secondly, there must be carefully controlled 
inference as to the nature and quality of that indwelling 


v GOD 135 


Creative Life which is partially expressed in all living 
organisms. In man that Life finds expression in an 
intenser, and therefore probably a more representative, 
form; and this is also a form of which we have direct 
knowledge in our own inner experience. 

To use this knowledge to interpret Creative Life is, 
I frankly admit, in effect to personify the Power 
behind things. But personification, provided always 
it is checked and controlled by the results of scientific 
observation, is not only a legitimate, it is a necessary 
mode of conception. If I am to interpret any life other 
than human I must, to however limited an extent and 
with whatever degree of qualification and hesitation, use 
my own inner experience as a key; that is, I must 
‘personify’ it. If I affirm of a dog that it 1s affectionate, 
frightened, ill-tempered or disappointed, I speak of the 
dog as if 2t were a person. But the personality which I 
thus ascribe to the dog must be understood to have, as 
it were, a large minus quantity appended. If I attribute 
such qualities to a rabbit, I am still implicitly ascribing 
to it personality, but with an increase in the appended 
minus quantity. But, instead of looking downwards, 
I may look up; I may venture to use my own experi- 
ence of the inner quality of life to interpret the 
quality of the Universal Life. Then I am ascribing 
personality to IT; but in that case it is with a large 
plus. 

This brings us up against a difficulty. Granted that 
it is admissible to ascribe personality to the Power 
behind the Universe, provided that conception be used 
with a meaning indefinitely enlarged—must not that 
enlargement be so enormous as to dwarf to the point 
of insignificance the original meaning of the term 
‘person’? Granted that it may be more appropriate 


136 REALITY CHAP. 


to speak of that Power as ‘Hn’ than as ‘Ir’, yet if 
He and Iv are both conceived as infinite, is there, for 
our poor human intellects, any practical difference 
between them? Have not both pronouns lost all real 
meaning? 

This objection is crushing—until we realise that the 
essence of personality and of its inward life does not 
consist in quantity but in quality. A man’s passion for 
his ladylove takes up no more room in space than his 
affection for his great-aunt;:the difference is one of 
intensity and quality, not of size. The difference 
between the kind of disapprobation with which a 
fashionable undergraduate regards a man who wears 
the wrong tie and that with which Christ viewed the 
Pharisees, is a difference which may be described as 
‘world-wide-—but that does not imply that it is one 
to which the diameter of the earth is in the smallest 
degree relevant. Once grasp the point that personality 
and its characteristics are a matter of quality, not of 
quantity, and we can brave that ‘astronomical intimi- 
dation’ to which otherwise from the mere size of the 
material Universe we might succumb. If the essence of 
personality had anything at all to do either with size, 
or with capacity to exert foot-pounds of physical force, 
any analogies or inferences from human to divine per- 
sonality would be ridiculous. But when St. John, for 
instance, maintains that the quality of love as mani- 
fested in the personality of Christ may be an adequate 
representation of a quality inherent in the Divine, his 
contention, whether we accept it or not, is at least not 
inherently absurd. 

To personify the Power behind things is not, as so 
many fear, a ‘pathetic illusion’; it is a necessity of 
thought. It is sometimes said that Philosophy demands 


v GOD 137 


an Impersonal Absolute, Religion a Personal God. 
Nothing could be further from the truth. Unless the 
argument outlined above is wholly fallacious, any Phi- 
losophy which does not conceive the Infinite as in some 
sense concretely personal is intellectually blind at one 
essential point. I have argued (p. 90) that individ- 
uality is the synthetic focus of the living organism, and 
that in the ascending scale of evolution individuality 
and freedom increase as life reveals itself in forms ever 
intenser and more highly organised (p. 86). Analogy 
suggests that this principle applies also to the Life in the 
Universe. The Universe is a coherent system—otherwise 
Science could not interpret It in terms of Law—and It is 
the expression of a Living Power; then is It not of living 
organisms the most highly organised of all? Unless, 
then, we are to conceive that Life as less vital than our 
own, we must ascribe to it that element in personality 
which makes it a focus of synthetic activity, originative, 
directive, co-ordinative. We must not think of It as an 
‘ocean of life,’ or even as ‘a stream of consciousness,’ 
but as a closely knit, highly centralised, self-consistent, 
fully self-conscious, eternally creative Unity. That is, 
we must not regard the Ultimate Reality as merely in 
a vague way personal; we must ascribe to It, what, 
for want of a richer word, we can only call Individuality. 
Indeed, I would go so far as to maintain that to 
individualise the Deity by the use of a proper name like 
Allah or Jehovah is, up to a point, philosophically more 
sound than to think of Him exclusively in abstract 
impersonal terms like +4 Octov or the Absolute. 

But though to personify the Power behind things 
is a necessity, it is a dangerous necessity. Man cannot 
be trusted to make God in his own image. Pass in 
review all the things that man has imagined his Deity 


138 REALITY CHAP. 


to demand or to approve—human sacrifice, temple- 
prostitution, grotesque asceticism, the rack and the 
stake, not to mention the endless routine of senseless 
ritual and trivial superstition. Tantum religio potuit 
suadere malorum! <A religion which personifies unworth- 
ily the Power behind things will do far more to retard 
than to advance the highest welfare of the race. That 
is why an epoch in human progress dates from the sug- 
gestion, perhaps first made by St. Paul, that instead of 
picturing God in their own image, or in the image tradi- 
tional in a particular community, men should picture 
Him in the image of Jesus Christ. Historic Christianity 
has never quite risen to this conception. Hitherto it 
has always compromised; its teachers have lacked the 
insight or the courage to reject out and out certain 
elements in the conception of God derived from earlier 
beliefs." But just in so far as Christianity has risen to 
its heritage and has conceived of God in terms of Jesus 
Christ, it has put before the world a personification of 
the Divine which at least 1s not unworthy. How far it 
is also true, we shall examine later. 

To all this there is an objection, raised less by the 
professional philosopher than by the average educated 
man. Personality in human experience is associated with 
limitation, idiosynerasy and caprice. The Power behind 
Things, whatever else it may be, is not such: does It 
not, above all, manifest Itself in a reign of law? The 
reign of law seems incompatible with the idea that the 
Power of whose activity it is the expression is one to 
which the term ‘personal’ can properly be applied; for 
in the popular notion the essence of personality seems 
to be freedom to change one’s mind or vary one’s con- 
duct. But human beings chop and change about, not 

2 Cf. my remarks in Concerning Prayer, p. 33 ff. (Macmillan, 1916.) 


v GOD | 139 


because they are persons, but because they are persons 
subject to infirmity of purpose, or liable to be con- 
fronted with unforeseen or unforeseeable emergencies— 
and these are negative conditions of human life, not 
positive qualities of personality as such. If we speak of 
the Power behind Things as personal, we must attribute 
to It a steadiness of purpose and a range of knowledge 
infinitely transcending ours. Should we not then expect 
Its activities to function in ways calculable and con- 
sistent, which to us must appear as necessary and 
unalterable laws—‘God is not a man that he should lie, 
neither the son of man that he should repent’. We are 
apt to forget that no conception and therefore no word 
which we can apply to God can be really appropriate. 
Ideas, and the words in which we express them, derive 
what meaning they have from things and conditions of 
which we have experience. What idea or word appro- 
priate to our limited experience could be adequate to 
describe the Infinite? But, unless the whole argument 
of this chapter is fallacious, personality is much the 
least inadequate. The idea of personality is, as it were, 
the window through which we look out upon the limit- 
less Beyond; it is the smoked glass through which alone 
we can behold the Sun. 

Some thinkers would prefer to use the word ‘Supra- 
personal’; and, if this were to become current coin, it 
might do well enough. Still, in my judgment, ‘personal’ 
is really the better, because the safer, word. It is at 
least full of concrete meaning—incidentally, it does jus- 
tice to the testimony of religious experience—and it can 
be used without danger of intellectual error because no 
educated person is likely to forget that in speaking of 
God as personal we are expanding the idea of personality 
to meet this special case. On the other hand, if we 


140 REALITY CHAP, 


refuse to call God personal, and conscientiously use 
words like ‘supra-personal’, we are pretty certain to end 
by thinking of Him as impersonal. Thought in the last 
resort 1s controlled by imagination, and it does matter 
whether the word we use seems to stand for He or It; 
and to the imagination ‘supra-personal’ inclines to stand 
for It. It is better to do a slight violence to language 
than to impoverish thought; it is preferable to expand 
the idea of personality rather than to contract our idea 
of God. To think or speak of the Infinite in abstract | 
and impersonal terms is unconsciously to liken Him to 
forces lower, poorer and less full of vitality than our- 
selves, such as the electric current or the life principle 
in a tree. To say that God is ‘personal but something 
more’, is to say that the Creative Principle must be 
higher than the highest, richer than the richest, more 
full of life than the alivest of all the things It has pro- 
duced—and that surely is merely common sense. 

To the ‘pure reason’ God must always be that which 
transcends comprehension; no concept derived from 
human experience can be applied to Him, except in an 
analogical sense. In so far, then, as its intellectual 
content is concerned, any language in which we speak of 
God must be in the last resort symbolic. But life is a 
thing which we know, not by the ‘pure reason’, but from 
direct inner experience; and this knowledge, though 
imperfect, is not symbolic; for that which knows is 
homogeneous with that which is known. And what we 
so know about life is its qualitative character. if, then, 
Life is a representative expression of Reality, the quali- 
tative knowledge we have of life in its richest form 
(i.e. in personality) is up to a pomt knowledge of 
Reality. The most original contribution of Christianity 
towards philosophic thinking is the assertion that in the 


v GOD 141 


personality of the Ideal Man the qualification ‘up to a 
point’ is no longer needed. Such an assertion requires, 
and in the next two chapters will receive, examination. 
But if it can be sustained, it follows that, although for 
thought God transcends all comprehension, qualitatively 
He can be known; to the intellect He is the ‘Veiled 
Being’; but to the heart the mystery has been revealed. 
‘This, then, is the message . . . which we declare unto 
you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.’ 

If, then, we apply to God the concept ‘personality’ 
it must be with the stress laid, not on any intellectualised 
definition of that word, but on its qualitative content. 
The same thing holds of concepts like Life or Mind. If 
these are taken abstractly, that is, if they are thought 
rather than intuited, the logical result is Pantheism. If 
the Universe is the expression of Life (or even of Mind) 
conceived abstractly, whatever is, is equally divine. 
But Life and Mind are known to us at first hand only 
in personality; and there they are apprehended con- 
cretely and intuitively. In such apprehension quality 
is always the essential element. Pantheism, then, rests 
on the fallacy of abstraction. If from the existence of 
Life or Mind it is legitimate to draw any inference at 
all as to the nature of the Universe, it can only be the 
Theistic inference: all things proceed from God and 
exist in Him, but they are not all equally expressive of 
His nature. 

By purely intellectual considerations such as the 
foregoing I myself have been gradually led farther and 
farther away from the tempered Absolutism of the school 
of T. H. Green, in the direction of what I have called 
the Higher Anthropomorphism. But it was only after 
I had actually penned the first draft of this chapter that 
it flashed across my mind that of all the great, religious 


142 REALITY CHAP. V 


teachers of the world Christ is the most unashamedly 
anthropomorphic. From primitive physical Anthro- 
pomorphism He was, it goes without saying, as far 
removed as were Confucius or the Buddha, Zeno or Zoro- 
aster. His anthropomorphism was completely spiritual; 
but, just for that reason, it could be absolutely thorough- 
going. He told men to speak and think of God as 
Father. Many before Him had applied that name to 
God; Christ alone would have men to use no other, to 
think out fully all its implications, and to apply them 
to every circumstance of life. ‘If ye being evil know 
how to give good gifts unto your children, how much 
more your Father in heaven’. The whole basis of Christ’s 
practical religious teaching is just one great anthropo- 
morphic thought. God is our Father, only He is as much 
better than the best, as He is wiser than the wisest and 
stronger than the strongest, of human parents—let man 
believe this, and act accordingly. 

Christ’s view of God was not the result of philo- 
sophic speculation; it was the intuition of supreme 
religious genius, interpreting, we may surmise, unique 
personal experience. And the line of argument we have 
followed out has not yet brought us anything like as 
far as that. It is pointing us in the direction of the 
conception of a Living God, but not as yet towards that 
of a Loving God. That may come later. But just so 
far as it seems to be a necessity for thought to conceive 
the Power behind phenomena as concretely personal, I 
submit that the anthropomorphism of Jesus is intellectu- 
ally in advance of the rationalised abstractions of a 
Hegel, a Heckel, or a Herbert Spencer. 


VI 


CREATIVE STRIFE 


143 


CREATIVE STRIFE 
SYNOPSIS 


Tue Witt To Power 


For Nietzsche, Christ is the preacher of a ‘slave-morality’. In fact 
it is Nietzsche’s morality that should bear this name; for this represents 
the slave’s dream of how he would behave if only he were free; it is 
the expression, not of greatness, but of a neurotic desire for greatness. 

The true expression of the free-man’s temper is the princely motto— 
Ich Dien. ‘I am in the midst of you as he that serves.’ The worship 
of naked power is the ideal of an enslaved world which Historic 
Christianity has only partially succeeded in discrediting. 


Tue Ines oF Power 


Power means ability to effect a purpose consciously entertained; it 
is meaningless if applied to a force which has no capacity of initiation or 
self-direction. 

Nietzsche’s conception of the Universe as the expression of a purpose- 
less Will to power is a poetic fancy; and the notion that it is somehow 
fine for a man to live in tune with such a Universe is an imaginative 
fallacy. 

If the Universe is without purpose, Mr. Russell is right in saying that 
Man is greater than Nature; if not, a study of the inner quality of the 
Will to live may throw light on the purpose of the Whole. To such a 
study this chapter essays to be a contribution. 


BrioLtocy AND ETHIcs 


The place of Natural Selection in biological evolution. Three limit- 
ing conditions of the operation of the ‘struggle for existence’ in the 
animal kingdom: 

(1) The struggle is for the survival, not so much of the individual, 
as of the species. 

(2) War, that is, fighting between groups of the same species, is 
practically unknown. 

(3) The struggle is for food or the opportunity of procreating the 
species. The phrase, therefore, is inaptly transferred to the struggle for 
wealth, fame or power in human society—the attainment of which 
generally leads to sterility. 


144 


Life is strife; but clear thinking on the distinction between strife that 
is creative and strife that is destructive, is the vital need of our times. 


Is Naturs Non-MoRAL? 


Nature is not a Garden of Eden; nevertheless the cruelty and the 
waste which exist—apart from man—can be, and have been, gravely 
over-estimated. 

In the animal kingdom there is present the germ of what in man 
becomes morality. 


CIVILISATION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 


Material progress is dependent on Science, Invention and Organisa- 
tion. But these would be impossible without the disinterested love of 
knowledge, and the disinterested love of constructive work. 

The conditions, however, in which these can function effectively on a 
large scale are brought into existence by man’s unique gift for 
co-operation. 

We ask, then, to what quality in human nature is due this creative 
power of co-operation? Intellect, energy and courage only lead to 
progress in a society dominated by the ideals of Honesty and Justice. 

But these are principles of equilibrium only. For progress there is 
required generosity, idealism and the spirit of self-sacrificing service. Of 
this creative love the care of parent to child is the simplest and most 
typical expression. Progress, we conclude, results where Intelligence 
and Energy are guided by the spirit of disinterested devotion—in the 
love of truth, in the love of constructive work and, above all, in the 
love of fellow-men. 


CREATIVE STRIFE 


The continuity between Man and Nature, which Darwin demon- 
strated, justifies us in seeking, in the life of man, the inner quality of 
the Life which expresses itself in Creative Evolution. But we must 
study man’s life at its best and highest, for only there is it consciously 
creative—elsewhere it is destructive. 

Strife is creative only when it is the expression of Love. 


145 


VI 
CREATIVE STRIFE 


THe WiLL To PowrER 


To Nietzsche Christ is the supreme corrupter of man- 
kind, the all too successful prophet of a ‘slave morality’. 
But in fact it is the morality of which Nietzsche is him- 
self the prophet that should be called the slave’s. It is 
Nietzsche himself who, with a perfervid passion moulding 
a superb literary style, has given the world the classical 
expression of the slave’s ideal—the ideal, I mean, by 
which the crushed and cringing servitor would like to 
live if only he were strong and free. The power to 
do or get the particular things he wants to do or get 
is everyman’s desire; but sheer Power—hard, empty 
hectoring Power—is the day-dream of the down-trodden. 
To such the meaning of real liberty is veiled; they 
neither understand nor want that equal fellowship of 
mutual consideration, courtesy and self-respect, which 
among themselves the free-born take for granted. What 
the slave longs for is to be, still more to feel himself 
to be, the kind of man he thinks his master is. But 
on that point his thought is not his master’s. Those 
who are used to rule do not envisage their own character 
and ethic as these appear to those beneath them. 
Rarely do those born to power conceive themselves as 
self-assertive, hard, oppressive. A parvenu may pride 
146 


vi CREATIVE STRIFE 147 


himself on qualities like these; the others, whatever they 
may be in actual fact, generally like to think of them- 
selves as reasonable, kindly and beneficent, and, if stern 
at times, then only under dire necessity. 

Modern psychology has shown that the Will to 
Power, where it appears in an exaggerated form, has 
usually a pathological explanation. It originates not 
from the strength but from the weakness of the patient. 
Some personal defect, some exaggerated delinquency in 
early years, an oppressive parent or teacher, a series of 
social snubs or the reprimands of a superior, often pro- 
duce a permanent sense of inferiority; this is resented, 
and therefore driven out of conscious memory, but 
still dominates the sub-conscious self. In compensation 
for this dimly felt inferiority that self puts forth 
an exaggerated conviction of pre-eminence and self- 
assertion which not infrequently may show itself in 
harsh ideal or in destructive action. That is why, even 
among those of free and noble birth, there are always 
individuals who accept that truly ‘slave’ morality which 
idealises mere strength and violence. And in periods 
and places where parental or scholastic discipline is 
repressive and severe, where class or race bitterness is 
acute and the tradition of political liberty is young, the 
number of such persons will be larger than where the 
contrary conditions hold. 

The Will to Power is only one of many instincts 
in the human animal; and any individual in whom, 
by reason of an abnormal development of the assertive 
instinct, the love instinct and the herd instinct have 
been atrophied, is, from a purely medical point of view, 
suffering from an arrest of growth which has resulted 
in what may be termed a kind of psychological mal- 
formation. Nietzsche, with the sensitiveness of genius 


148 REALITY CHAP. 


and the pathological instability which ultimately brought 
him to the madhouse, has given us the supreme expres- 
sion in literature of the slave’s ideal—the neurotic slave 
dreaming himself a king. 


Nietzsche’s doctrine of the superman [says Count Hermann 
Keyserling] is not an expression of greatness, but an expression 
of the desire for greatness, perhaps the most pathetic expres- 
sion of that desire which has ever been known.* 


The free-man’s temper is of a different kind. Inherit- 
ing a satus without stigma or ‘reproach, he has no need 
by egoistic self-assertion to force the world to acknowl- 
edge in him some claim to special eminence, in order 
to disguise, if possible even from himself, an inferiority 
secretly admitted. His self-respect does not depend on 
an artificial structure of reputation or conceit of power 
which he feels to be ever threatened by the opinion 
of his fellows. His own position being secure, he can 
afford to give free play to those instincts, innate in 
every healthy man, which rejoice in the good of others. 
His instinct of self-assertion, not being for ever har- 
nessed to the supposed necessity of self-defence, insen- 
sibly becomes a directive principle to those other instincts 
in the form of the impulsion noblesse oblige. There- 
fore he needs must devote himself to worthy ends; and, 
as the occasion may require, he is equally ready to follow 
or to lead. In either case his princely motto is [ch dien 
—I serve. 

But man, in the historic phrase, though born free 
is everywhere in chains. The majority of mankind 
have never yet achieved freedom. In addition a large 

* The Travel Diary of a Philosopher, E.T., vol. i. p. 42. (Jonathan 
Cape, 1925.) JI had written the preceding paragraphs before coming 


across this sentence by a German thinker who in many ways (see 
op. cit. p. 164) is in sympathy with Nietzche’s ethic. 


vi CREATIVE STRIFE 149 


proportion, as a result of this and of faulty ideals of 
education, are slightly pathological. Hence that ‘slave- 
morality’ which worships naked power as such is still 
widespread—though in a humaner phase of civilisation 
and in a democratic age it is less universal and less 
whole-hearted than in earlier epochs. 

What man admires on earth, that he ascribes to 
heaven, and he has always fashioned God in the image 
of his king. A race or a generation which reverences 
pomp and circumstance, and loves to abase itself before 
a splendid violence and a domineering will thinks of 
God as a celestial Sultan. But a race of free-men will 
demand a very different kind of God, or will worship 
not at all. On the altar of the free-man’s God must 
_ be inscribed his own Ich dien. 

Historic Christianity developed in an enslaved world 
which naturally thought of God as the imperial Caesar 
of the Universe, and neither the Church nor the world 
it tried to teach could easily think otherwise. But the 
ascription of divinity to Christ—whether metaphysically 
justifiable or not—meant that the word divinity must 
ultimately acquire a significance absolutely irreconcilable 
with the old Hebrew or pagan view of God. “The kings 
of the Gentiles lord it over them ... but I am in the 
midst of you as he that serves’. Slowly through the 
ages the word divinity has changed its meaning. To-day 
men think of the King of Kings less and less in terms 
of Caesar, more and more in terms of Christ; they see 
in the moral grandeur of a heroic death, not the humilia- 
tion, but the majesty of God. 

Hell fire and some other things in official and popular 
Christianity have in the past done much to keep alive 
the Sultanic view of God and encourage men to prostrate 
themselves before mere Power. In so far as the Church 


150 REALITY CHAP. 


has done that, it has taught Nietzsche’s own ideal— 
or rather, it has failed to unteach the ‘slave-morality’ 
of the ancient world. But in so far as Christianity has 
really seen ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of 
God in the face of Jesus Christ,’ it has made possible for 
millions the free-man’s worship of Creative Love. 


Tue IpEA oF PoWwER 


The foregoing considerations have an importance 
other than purely ethical by reason of the rampant 
muddle-headedness prevalent, even among some who 
think themselves philosophers, in regard to the concep- 
tions of Will and Power, whether as applied to Man or 
to the Universe. 

Power is a conception which implies quality quite 
as much as quantity; for power means ability to effect 
a purpose consciously entertained. Except in relation to 
such purpose, the word power is simply a metaphor— 
and a misleading one at that. The torrent that passes 
over the Falls of Niagara has been converted by human 
ingenuity into a source of power to accomplish purposes 
desired by human beings. But in itself this over- 
whelming mass of water has less power than a mosquito; 
for it has no capacity of self-direction, it can originate 
nothing; it can only passively submit to flow along a 
given channel. If an earthquake were to block the exit 
of the river from the Great Lakes, the water would not 
strive or cry aloud, it would initiate no movement; it 
would just lie still. In time the level would rise and a 
new outlet would be found; but that would be because 
more water had come in from outside, not because of 
any effort made by that already there, and then it would 
escape, not in a manner chosen by itself, but simply 
along the line of least resistance. 


VI CREATIVE STRIFE 151 


Only then if the Universe is the expression of con- 
scious Life, can Power be an attribute which can be 
ascribed to It. Everest is not more powerful than Mont 
Blanc, it is merely larger. And if the Universe is with- 
out purpose, then to speak of It as the expression of 
Power, is nonsense. Nietzsche rejected Materialism; 
all the more clearly for that his conception of the 
Universe as the expression of a purposeless Will to Power 
is seen to be a poetic fancy. The notion, then, that 
to identify oneself with the Will to Power is, as it were, 
to put oneself in tune with the Infinite, so far from 
being the deduction of a cold, clear-headed realism, is 
an imaginative fallacy. Only if Ultimate Reality is 
conscious, is there any point in attuning human effort 
to Its purpose or in conforming our values to Its— 
supposing we can ascertain them. If Reality is without 
purpose and without values, the idea that human ethic 
is the better for being a reflection of these negations 
is merely the ghost of a dead theology haunting the 
worshippers of a dead god. If God exists, then it is 
by His values that our ethic is determined; if not, no 
clear-headed thinker would build an ethic on the non- 
existent values of this non-existent being. 

Mr. Bertrand Russell, who is never muddle-headed, 
sees this clearly. After discarding (for reasons which 
seem to me inadequate) the view that life, and a fortiori 
conscious life, is a phenomenon of cosmic significance, he 
proceeds to draw that conclusion which alone is logical: 


We are ourselves the ultimate and irrefutable arbiters of 
value, and in the world of value Nature is only a part. Thus 
in this world we are greater than Nature. In the world of 
values, Nature in itself is neutral, neither good nor bad, deserv- 
ing of neither admiration nor censure. It is we who create 
value, and our desires which confer value. In this realm we 


152 REALITY CHAP. 


are kings, and we debase our kingship if we bow down to 
Nature. It is for us to determine the good life, not for Nature 
—not even for Nature personified as God.* 


On his premises Mr. Russell is right. But we have 
seen reason to reject his view that Life is a phenomenon 
of no real significance for the understanding of Reality. 
That being so, we shall expect to get further light on the 
nature of Reality by a study of the values which seem to 
emerge from an examination of the inner quality of the 
Will to live. : 

Such an examination I will forthwith essay. 


Biotocy AND Erxics 

Life is strife; and in the animal kingdom most of 
its energy is used up in the mere effort to keep alive. 
This effort expresses itself in a struggle for two quite 
different, and occasionally incompatible, ends—self-pres- 
ervation and the propagation of the species. From this 
struggle biological evolution has resulted. As a result 
of causes and by means of a mechanism at present 
imperfectly ascertained, all living organisms tend to 
produce offspring varying from the parent type; some 
of these variations (technically known as ‘mutations’) 
differ from the rest in the quality of being transmissible 
to descendants; and of these some are also useful in 
‘the struggle for existence’, as tending either to the 
preservation of the individual organism or to the mul- 
tiplication, nurture, or protection of its offspring. Thus 
there are two positive factors, (a) that life is a dynamic 
striving and (b) that it constantly throws up mutations 
having a survival value. These have been subjected to 
the negative action of Natural Selection, which weeds 


* B. Russell, What I Belteve, pp. 24-25. (Kegan Paul, 1925.) 


ie CREATIVE STRIFE 153 


out the individuals and species least well adapted to their 
environment. 

This selective process is often described as ‘the sur- 
vival of the fittest’. That is misleading; Natural Selec- 
tion is a principle, not of survival, but of elimination; 
and therefore, taken by itself, it is a principle, not of life, 
but of death. And it eliminates, not those who are unfit 
in the sense of being less worthy to exist, but those less 
capable of existing at all in a particular environment. 
Under certain circumstances Natural Selection kills off 
heroes but preserves the typhoid bacteria which attack 
them. 

‘The struggle for existence’ may also be a misleading 
phrase. Striving and desire are inherent in the very 
nature of life, and in the animal kingdom this does 
express itself in a ‘struggle for existence’ in the literal 
sense of an effort to keep alive. But in the animal 
kingdom the struggle goes on under three limiting con- 
ditions of the utmost significance. 

(1) In Nature the instincts which tend to the survival 
of the species are always in the long run more powerful 
than those which put the individual first. There are 
even cases in the insect world where the act of impreg- 
nating the female is fatal to the male; while the self- 
sacrifice of the mother bird has become a proverb. The 
point, however, requires no arguing; it is self-evident 
that, if in any species in any generation the number of 
individuals which reach maturity is not at least equal 
to the average of previous generations, the process of 
diminution must be reversed or the species will die out. 
In Nature, then, the struggle is less for individual than 
for race survival. 

The basilisk in medieval lore was a creature so fierce 
that immediately after birth it devoured both its parents. 


154 REALITY CHAP. 


Since the number of the species would thus every 
generation be reduced by one-half, it is not surprising 
that no specimen survives. And, by simple arithmetic, 
nations or classes which continue to indulge in families 
of one child only will be in the same case. 

(2) Throughout Nature we have the spectacle of one 
species preying upon another; common also, though less 
frequent, is the struggle of individuals within the same 
species—two thrushes for the same worm, two stags for 
the same doe. But fighting between different groups of 
individuals within the same species is very rare, in fact all 
but unknown. War is an institution which man has in 
common with the ant, but apparently with no other 
creature.’ 

(3) In the animal world the struggle for existence 
involves conflict for the sake of food or the opportunity 
of parentage. When the phrase is applied, as it so often 
is, to human life, it means the struggle for wealth, com- 
fort, fame or power. But there is one fact written large 
across the history of civilisation. Individuals of those 
classes which have been most successful in this struggle 
leave behind them fewer children than the average, and 
their families—with a few conspicuous exceptions— 
die out. In the biological sense a struggle in which suc- 
cess leads to this result is a struggle not for existence but 
for extinction. 


Life is strife—it was the Buddha, not Darwin, who 


* Certain species of ants conduct organised warfare with other ants. 
They also appear to have as slaves ants of a slightly different species. 
‘Go to the ant’ will hardly be the exhortation of a modern moralist. 

It would appear that the often-quoted case of the imported brown 
rat exterminating the native black rat in this country will not stand 
examination. The brown has largely superseded the black rat because 
he is cleverer at escaping man and other enemies, and at opening up 
new avenues of subsistence. There is no evidence of fighting on a large 
scale between the two species. Cf. J. Arthur Thomson, System of 
Animate Nature, p. 298 f, 


vI CREATIVE STRIFE 155 


first proclaimed that to the world. But, alike in its 
philosophy of the Universe and in the practical conduct 
of life, humanity will wander down blind alleys till it 
grasps the simple fact that strife is of two kinds—that 
which creates, and that which destroys. 

The antithesis between creative and destructive strife 
is no mere debating point for philosophic schools. 
The doctrine that war ‘by destroying creates’, and 
that internecine competition in the sphere of Economics 
or in Real Politik will produce the maximum of social 
good, has been preached to Europe as a gospel for half 
a century. Purporting to be the lesson of Biology, it has 
claimed the authority of Science. That claim is without 
justification. As a mere matter of fact Creative Evolu- 
tion has not worked that way. But the illusion to the 
contrary has seemed to give the sanction of the Universe 
to the promptings of human egoism. The name and 
prestige of Natural Science have been invoked to give a 
basis in reason to the doctrine that Might is Right; that 
doctrine has been accepted as their tacit, if not overt, 
creed by no small proportion of those who in things 
practical control the world—and mankind at large has 
had to foot the bill. 

Ambitious men made wars, avaricious cheated and 
oppressed, before Biology was ever dreamt of. For such 
the misinterpretation of Darwinism provides, not a rea- 
son, but an excuse. But the supposed lesson of Biology 
has weakened the hands of those who would hold these 
in check; and it has diminished the prestige of ordinary 
morality with the generality of men. Of course, if 
it is really true that the Power behind the Universe is 
characteristically expressed, to use a now hackneyed 
phrase, in ‘nature red in tooth and claw’—humanity 
ought to face that situation. But if this is not 
true, our first duty to ourselves and to our time 


156 REALITY CHAP. 


is to find out the error and publish its falsity 
abroad. 
Is Naturnr Non-Morau? 

Nature is not the Garden of Eden we should like to 
find it; still less, however, is it the Hell that in some 
moods we picture. It is an imaginative fallacy to see 
as one awtul totality the pain of every living thing; pain 
is only felt by individuals, and in the animal world it 
would seem as if the individual’s share is quite small. 
That capacity to feel on behalf of others, which adds 
so much to human sorrow, hardly there exists, so that 
the individual experiences little pain apart from the 
physical suffering which falls to its own lot. Again, we 
must not think of the animal world as if it consisted 
mainly of creatures like the horse and the dog, made 
exceptionally sensitive by centuries of selective breeding, 
soft nurture and the education of human intercourse; 
nor even of these as if their capacity for feeling was in 
any way comparable to that of human beings. In the 
vast majority of living creatures, sensation, so far as we 
can judge, rarely reaches that level of acuteness which 
we should call definitely pain. The ‘cloven worm’ prob- 
ably feels the cleaving process hardly more than I feel 
the paring of my nails; the squeal of a rabbit bitten by 
a stoat is not less loud, but probably indicates less 
actual pain, than that of a small boy smacked by a firm 
but kind mamma. Among animals disease is rare, and 
as a rule it either kills quickly or causes small discom- 
fort. Death is swift, and, even if violent, is rarely very 
painful. The hawk’s victim, until the moment of its 
death, has lived blithely unconscious and unapprehensive 
of its doom. Sudden fear either excites or calms; and 
there is some evidence that in the tiger’s grip (even with 
a human being) fear inhibits feeling and produces 


VI CREATIVE STRIFE 157 
anesthesia in the prey. And if low capacity for sensa- 
tion, while reducing pain, makes pleasure also much 
less keen, the impression one derives from watching 
wild life is that its dominant mood is a kind of suf- 
fused happiness. And where happiness ceases, death is 
usually at hand. Lastly, the animals can know little 
of the suffering (as of the pleasure) which inevitably 
accompanies man’s enhanced capacity for memory and 
prevision; in their world disappointment, despair, 
bereavement and remorse are, in anything like the sense 
in which we feel them, quite unknown. There is little 
sorrow, and there is no sin 

But if our idea of the cruelty of Nature is to a large 
extent a sympathetic fallacy, what of the waste? To 
take one out of a hundred possible examples: a herring 
spawns several hundred thousand eggs, of which on an 
average only about three will reach maturity. But 
they are not wasted; every one of them, whether as egg 
or tiny fish, becomes food for some other living creature. 
Is the hen’s egg that I ate for breakfast wasted because 
it never reached the chicken stage? We may allow our- 
selves to wish that evolution had developed on entirely 
vegetarian lines; but so long as I enjoy my mutton chop 
without a qualm, I cannot accuse Nature because the 
lion feeds on an antelope, which in all probability 
lived more happily and died with perhaps less pain than 
the sheep from which [I dine. 

Once man appears on the scene, pain, waste and 
cruelty present a problem the magnitude of which 
eternally confounds the optimist. But outside the sphere 
of man—and the pain which he inflicts on animals—it is 
on a small scale. Later on we shall inquire whether a 
solution, or any approximation to a solution, can be 
reached of the problem of evil as it exists where man 


158 REALITY CHAP. 


comes in. If anything like a solution can be attained 
to the problem when it is presented in its acutest form, 
the greater will include the less. But if we can get no 
light on the greater issue, the existence of the lesser will 
not increase our darkness much. 

The consideration that, apart from man, the case for 
cruelty and waste in Nature is not a strong one, 1s 
merely negative. Closer observation, however, points 
to a positive conclusion that there is operative in Nature 
an active Will to Good. Kropotkin in his now classical 
treatise, Mutual Aid, shows that, at the level of con- 
sclousness attained in bird and animal life, friendly 
co-operation is the rule, hostility the exception—not only 
between members of the same species but even between 
different species. The one conspicuous exception of course 
is where carnivorous or insectivorous creatures prey 
upon smaller or weaker species. But, as already pointed 
out, the relation between the carnivorous species and 
their ordinary food is precisely the same as the relation 
that prevails between man and the chicken or the sheep. 
There is no more ‘immorality’, and as little cruelty, in 
the one case as in the other. But in the mutual relations 
between members of the same species there are striking 
phenomena of quite an opposite character. Go to the 
tiger and the wolf—types so admired by certain would-be 
supermen. Deprive the tigress of her whelps, watch the 
elaborate co-operation of the wolf pack on the hunt. 
Mother-love and esprit de corps are here apparent in 
more than rudimentary form. When we note qualities 
like these in the fiercest of her children, the theory of an 
essential immorality in the ways of Nature has lost its 
plausibility 

Nor is the significance of such qualities annulled by 
the objection that they are there simply as a result of 


VE | CREATIVE STRIFE 159 


Natural Selection, their presence being of value in the 
struggle for existence. Undoubtedly Natural Selection 
puts a premium on such qualities; but it does not pro- 
duce them. Natural Selection no more brings into 
existence instincts or qualities which have a ‘survival 
value’ than a Scholarship Examination brings into exist- 
ence clever or well-taught boys. It merely tests and 
selects the materials presented. But that means that 
the instincts and qualities in question—parent love and 
esprit de corps in a rudimentary form—are not in any 
sense a product of internecine struggle; on the contrary 
they are an emergence of an inner quality of Life which, 
once it has found expression, impels the individual, to 
however small an extent, to rise above that struggle. 
Moreover—the point is all-important—it is in the higher 
animals, where life begins to be exhibited in an intenser 
form, that these qualities begin to show. The élan vital, 
as it expresses itself in the animal kingdom, is not yet 
moral; but it has started on the road that leads in that 
direction. 


CIVILISATION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 

Spiritual and material progress do not necessarily go 
together. But material progress is clearly the result of 
two things—first, a constant extension of scientific 
knowledge and invention, secondly, an ever-widening 
range of co-operation between man and man. Of these 
the second is, we shall see, really the more important, 
since on it in the last resort depends not only scientific 
discovery, industrial production and commerce, but, in 
highly civilised communities, the availability for daily 
use of the very simplest necessities of life. Civilisation 
and its products we are apt just to take for granted, or 
we ponder mainly on its glaring defects and its hideous 


160 RBALITY CHAP. 


failures. We often forget how much it has achieved; 
still more often we overlook the inner principles which 
have made that achievement possible. It is worth while 
to stop and ask, What are these inner principles? 
Civilisation is the creation of three activities, 
intelligence, energy and goodwill. By goodwill I do 
not mean anything negative or passive, like harmlessness 
or mere good nature; I mean a spirit whose characteristic 
quality is that it is both disinterested and constructive. 
And, I am bold-to maintain, it is this active Will to 
Good that is in the last resort the regulative and 
directive principle behind all achievement which is 
really creative; while intelligence and energy have been 
creative or destructive in exact proportion as they have 
or have not been directed towards disinterested ends. 
No one will dispute that it is to Science first and fore- 
most that man owes his present mastery of things 
material, and at first blush Science appears to be the 
expression of the intellect alone. But how did Science 
come into existence? Through the passion of a succes- 
sion of individuals for knowledge for its own sake. 
Science is the by-product of the disinterested love 
of truth. It is by its noble army of martyrs that the 
victories of Science, as of Religion, have been won. 
Man’s present triumph over Nature is due solely to that 
long line of men who have braved death, legal perse- 
cution, social ostracism, poverty and neglect because 
they valued truth above all else; who have valued it so 
highly that, in days when it seemed that Religion and 
Science were incompatible, they have cheerfully for 
truth’s sake renounced, not merely the good things 
of this life, but the hope of a life to come. Science is 
the clearest proof of all that the spirit of disinterested 
constructiveness is the mainspring of progress. 


" CREATIVE STRIFE 161 


Take next Invention and Organisation. These con- 
jointly have made useful for everyday life the gains of 
Science in the field of theoretic knowledge, At first 
sight it may appear that in this case the element of 
idealism is much to seek. Invention and Organisation, 
no doubt, have had their martyrs, but these havexbeen 
far less numerous and less conspicuous than those of 
Science. Advance in Invention and Organisation, far 
more frequently than in abstract Science, has been due 
to the desire for personal profit or advantage, a desire 
frequently exhibited in quite legitimate, but in no sense 
ideal, ways. And unfortunately Invention and Organisa- 
tion have been too often used by men to cdmpass the 
detriment or destruction of fellow-men. But here again, ~ 
if we look below the surface, the same principle is found 
to hold. The desire to use powers or opportunities, 
either for legitimate personal profit or for ends detri- 
mental to others, is a thing which belongs to common 
human nature; it is not a peculiarity of the inventor or 
the organiser. What is specially characteristic of these, 
and what gives them their power (for good or for evil) 
is not the fact that they share in the common selfishness 
of the race, but that they have in addition an interest 
in ideal values of a certain character. The great inventor 
and the great organiser are men of vision and imagina- 
tion, concentration and determination—men who can 
see a problem or a need to which others are blind, and 
who can discover the way to solve the problem they have 
seen. To do this they must have something of the artist’s 
enthusiasm; they must be men who have a disinterested 
passion for solving a problem, for creating something 
which is to them ‘a work of art’ valued for its own sake. 
No man ever made a really great invention who had no 
interest in good work neatly done. No man ever 


162 REALITY CHAP. 


organised a great business who was not interested 
in building up a structure which he valued for its own 
sake. Man has a disinterested passion for creative 
work to match his disinterested love of truth. It 
is man the discoverer, backed up by man the artist- 
craftsman and the artist-organiser, who has conquered 
Nature. Sometimes an originator has used his discoveries 
and inventions for selfish instead of for noble ends— 
though more often 1t is some one else who has seen 
this use for them. But roughly speaking it is true that 
Invention and Organisation, like pure Science, have 
been the work of men who loved them for their 
own sake. 

But the foundation-stone of civilisation lies deeper 
still. Discovery, Invention and Organisation are possible 
only because of man’s unique gift for co-operation. 
Commonplace and obvious as this statement is, the 
habit of taking the familiar for granted without probing 
its significance is so deeply engrained in all of us that 
an illustration to bring home this point will hardly be 
irrelevant. 

What are the conditions which make possible a new 
discovery—shall we say in Chemistry? Chemical dis- 
coveries are not made by Hottentots living in their 
native kraals; they are only made by men who live 
in conditions which presuppose the whole apparatus of 
a complicated civilisation. The individual discoverer 
must first know his subject thoroughly, that is, he must 
be one who inherits accumulated knowledge and methods 
of research which it has taken centuries of the 
co-ordinated effort of workers in many nations to evolve. 
He must have at command a scientific library, elaborate 
and delicate instruments, carefully prepared materials, 
an expensive laboratory—which represent the thought 


VI CREATIVE STRIFE 163 


and the labour of thousands focussed during centuries 
on this special science. Moreover, he himself must 
have been reared and fed, medically attended and | 
educated, by the care and at the expense of others for 
many years. Nor would he have made his great dis- 
covery had there not been there at his command that day 
coffee for his breakfast raised by the coolies of South 
America, bread grown on the prairies of Canada, coal 
from the mines of Wales to cook the meal, clothes to 
wear made of wool shorn from the flocks of Australia 
or of cotton gathered in the fields of Egypt; and behind 
all these the developed systems of railroad, steamship, 
factory, shop and domestic service which put them at 
his service. Behind every new discovery in any science 
lies the whole organised system of international industry 
and commerce, the elaborate social fabric of law and 
order, the educational machinery of many nations and 
the accumulated knowledge of all the centuries. Modern 
intellect has been able to make its unprecedented 
scientific advances solely because it has had at its dis- 
posal the resources, moral, intellectual and material, of 
a civilisation immeasurably more complex, more highly 
organised, and more world-embracing than any which 
preceded it. 

And what holds good of Discovery holds good still 
more of Invention, advance in which would be impossible 
without a great commercial and industrial system. Were 
there not so vast a market waiting, few new inventions 
could be produced at a price which would not be pro- 
hibitive. And it is because the fresh machinery and 
designs which are produced in one place become in a few 
years familiar to the whole world, that the opportunity 
of further improvement and new invention is ever being 
presented to many minds in many countries. The 


164 | REALITY CHAP. 


names of great discoverers, inventors, captains of 
industry, stand out as the conspicuous instruments 
of advance; but they are capable of being this 
only because each one of them, besides inheriting 
the achievements of the past, is also in a position 
to utilise and to focus on the line of advance the activi- 
ties of his contemporaries. The peaks of the mountains 
are the first to catch the light of the rising sun, but — 
it is the mass below which sustains them at their giddy 
height. 

But Co-operation on the grand scale is a new thing— 
the slow result of centuries of effort and of organisation 
continually improving—organisation of knowledge and 
education, of industry and commerce, of social and 
political life, of city, state and inter-state co-operation. 
Not so very long ago man was organised in small tribal 
groups having little contact other than hostile with 
outside tribes; security of person and property and 
ready communication existed only within areas com- 
paratively small; industry was carried on by single 
individuals or by tiny guilds owning a few simple tools 
and possessing a traditional skill in some particular 
handicraft; transport was slow and difficult so that only 
with great difficulty and at prohibitive expense could — 
the products of many distant lands be brought together 
for manufacture and then again redistributed to the 
ends of the earth; discoverers and inventors in one 
place worked in complete ignorance of those in 
another. And just so long as these conditions lasted 
man was a weakling and the slave of Nature. Before 
man could hold his own with Nature the Great State, 
the Great Industry, World Trade, International Science 
had to arise. Thus of all the conditions of human 
progress, Co-operation is the most fundamental. 


VI CREATIVE STRIFE 165 


There remains, then, to inquire, Upon the existence 
of what principle in the nature of man does the possi- 
bility of this grand-scale Co-operation depend? 

Here, again, it is easy at first glance to miss the 
essential point. The creation of great states and great 
industries, the commercial exploitation of the whole 
_world, have been effected under the leadership of men 
whose outstanding characteristics have been intellect, 
energy and courage. Nietzsche is right in hailing these 
as creative qualities; where he errs is in not perceiving 
that they are qualities which promote progress only in 
so far as they are in the last resort directed by, and sub- 
ordinated to the Will to Good. 

Intellect, energy and courage can be directed either 
to purely selfish or to purely ideal ends. In the actual 
experience of life we find that the ends to which they 
are directed are generally mixed. Few men are so 
selfish as not to have at heart, at any rate to some 
extent, the interests of their family, their class, or their 
country. Few are so disinterested as never to be moved 
one hairbreadth by considerations of personal vanity or 
private interest. The point, however, that I urge is that 
intellect, energy and courage are creative forces, in exact 
proportion to the extent to which they are directed 
towards unselfish ends; they are destructive, in exact 
proportion as they are directed towards ends that are 
purely self-regarding. 

Napoleon stands as the type of the superman ideal 
in history; and his life affords the classical illustration 
of the truth of this contention. The French Revolution, 
to the extent that it was really guided by the ideal of 
‘liberty, equality and fraternity’, and not merely by 
personal and class hatred, was a creative moment in 
European progress; and the embodiment of those ideals 


166 REALITY CHAP. 


in terms of just and efficient government was mainly the 
work of Napoleon. But just in so far as his career was 
the expression of the Will to Power—personal and 
national—his influence was wholly destructive; he 
bathed Europe in blood and impoverished, morally as 
much as materially, the country which he had himself 
consolidated as well as those which his ambition had all 
but enslaved. 

Look again at the world of commerce. The slogan 
‘Business is business’ comes very near to meaning 
‘Business is war’. But production and distribution 
are a necessary public service. And even if conditions 
in some ways analogous to warfare exist between the 
individuals or groups who conduct this service, it can 
be and often is an honourable warfare—a_ sporting 
competition in which men ‘play the game’. Granted, 
this does not always happen. Things are very far from 
being ideal; goods are not always ‘up to sample’; verbal 
engagements may not always be honourably adhered 
to; agents and buyers may take commissions to betray 
their masters’ interests; employees are often sweated; 
dirty tricks are played. But all this is one side only 
of the matter. Such things are still the exception 
rather than the rule. More often than not goods are up 
to sample, engagements are kept, agents can be trusted, 
employees are reasonably content—but for that, trade 
would be impossible. Nor is it enough to explain such 
honesty as there is by saying that it exists merely 
because experience shows that in the long run it 
is the best policy. It exists because—at any rate in 
those countries where commerce really flourishes—there 
is a high pride in the credit of the firm, a genuine interest 
in good work well done, and the majority of men love 
fair dealing for its own sake—even though, given 


VI CREATIVE STRIFE 167 


sufficient temptation and a good chance of not being 
detected, many may succumb. It is beyond dispute that 
m trade honesty is creative, dishonesty destructive. 
Commercial prosperity depends on confidence. In coun- 
tries where verbal agreements are repudiated, where 
no agents can be trusted, trade languishes; where the 
opposite holds, and in exact proportion as it holds, trade 
flourishes. 

But something more than a minimum of business 
honesty is needed. Commerce and industry thrive only 
where there exist security of person and property. But 
these depend entirely on the intelligent and impartial 
administration of Justice by the state. Where officials 
can be regularly bribed or intimidated, where judges 
normally decide in accordance with family interests or 
personal favouritism, where false witnesses can be pur- 
chased for a few rupees a head, progress languishes. 
Indeed, I hazard the opinion that their poor success in 
solving the problem of civil justice has been the main 
cause of the relative stagnation of civilisation among 
such highly gifted peoples as those of India and China. 

Honesty and justice are the fundamental conditions 
of Co-operation. But alone they are not enough. 
Experience shows that in the long run those businesses 
are most successful in which the relation of co-operation 
between employer and employed, and also between the 
firm and its ‘connexion’, has in it an element which goes 
beyond honesty; where the spirit all round is one which 
prefers, if it must err at all, to err on the side of gener- 
osity. Indeed, real honesty is only possible in a society 
where the majority have generous instincts—where 
buyers are willing to give a fair price and producers 
desire to do the best that can be done at that price. A 
survey of the great and old-established businesses of the 


168 REALITY CHAP. 


commercial world will show that firms which over a long 
period have acquired a reputation for honesty of this 
generous quality acquire a connexion which treats them 
in the same spirit. And if ever, as does occa- 
sionally happen, such a firm declines, the cause will be, 
not its adherence to the higher business morality, but the 
fact that its management has fallen into the hands of 
men less enterprising, less intelligent, or less industrious 
—sometimes, even, the abandonment by a new genera- 
tion of the old tradition of fair dealing which was the 
source of the firm’s good name. 

Justice, similarly, in the strictly legal sense of the 
word, is not a principle of progress but merely of 
equilibrium: it administers the law that is, it does 
nothing to amend it. But, if mankind is to advance, it 
is not enough to secure the impartial administration 
of the social system and the law that exists; there must 
also be its gradual supersession by a system progressively 
more just, more intelligent and more humane. History 
shows that laws, institutions, and social customs need 
constant amelioration; and without this there can be no 
advance. Laws, institutions, and customs are intimately 
related to national character. They express the character 
of a people—or, at least, of its dominant elements—in 
the past, and they mould its character for the future. It 
follows that progress is impossible without continual 
political, social and ethical reform. 

And to what is reform of law or custom due? At 
once we come upon the creative function of the prophet, 
the martyr, the reformer. Progress always involves 
criticism of accepted ideas, usually also of the usages 
and the institutions in which they are embodied. Such 
criticism inevitably provokes opposition; especially 
where the change necessitated threatens the material 


VI CREATIVE STRIFE 169 


interests, as well as the traditional prejudices, of power- 
ful sections of the community. Hence the reformer, 
whether of ideas or of practice, has always to take the 
risk of being a martyr. His motives, like those of other 
men, are generally mixed; the desire for personal dis- 
tinction, or for the furtherance of the sectional interests 
of the groups with which he is most closely identified, 
usually enters into, and thereby impairs, his disinterested 
perception of the right and his disinterested devotion to 
its attainment. But here again the greatness and per- 
manence of the advance which he achieves depend mainly 
on the extent to which ideal and disinterested motives 
predominate in the minds of himself and those whom 
he leads. Just in so far as he is swayed by purely per- 
sonal ambition, or the interests of a particular sect, class 
or nation, he retards, instead of promoting, the advance 
of humanity. 

Progress depends partly upon a growing keenness of 
perception for ethical ideals, partly upon an advance 
in the art of reducing them to practice. Primitive man 
recognises the rights of others only within the borders 
of a small group of blood relations. A large part of 
moral progress consists in the gradual extension of the 
range of persons towards whom obligation is recognised 
as existing—from the tribe to the city, from the city to 
the nation, from the nation to civilised humanity, and 
from that to all mankind. Partly it consists in enriching 
and enlarging the conception of the nature of the obli- 
gation due. First comes the primitive justice which 
demands no more, and exacts no less, than eye for eye 
and tooth for tooth. Later on comes the discovery 
that justice alone will not suffice. The strictest pay- 
ment to each man of his bare rights is not enough. 
That growing capacity of Co-operation, which has alone 


170 REALITY CHAP. 


made possible the advance of man, has in the last resort 
been due to generosity, the readiness to do more than 
one need, to give more and exact less than is strictly 
in the bond, to sympathise and to forgive. It has been 
due, that is, to the spirit which inspires the brother and 
the friend, the hero and the martyr, the prophet and 
the reformer, both those who are known to fame 
and the vastly larger number of the unhonoured and 
unknown. } | | 

And, when we come to think of it, it is this self- 
same spirit, only in another aspect, which expresses 
itself in the self-sacrificing care and labour of the parent 
for the child, but for which the race of man could never 
have existed. And to this expression—the simplest and 
oldest, but in some ways the most typical of all—we 
see that the name most obviously appropriate is 
Creative Love. 

There is in human nature an instinct for self-immo- 
lation which can easily be mistaken for self-devotion. 
But neither asceticism nor Quixotic sacrifice are con- 
structive. Creative Love, as it must be backed by energy, 
so it must be controlled by reason—but not too much 
controlled. An act or temper which is to be spiritually 
creative must have an aspect of abandon; a flame from 
which men seek to light their torches must be a flare. 
The prodigality of Nature is a true reflection of a 
necessary element in the highest spiritual life; ‘good 
measure pressed down and running over’. Generosity 
is the note of the heroic, Animaeque magnae prodigus 
Regulus. ‘High heaven dislikes the lore of nicely 
calculated less or more’. The balanced perfection cf 
Greek art just falls short of the exuberant plenitude 
which speaks through all the restraint, the proportion 
and the intellectual coherence of the greatest of the 


vt CREATIVE STRIFE 171 


Gothic cathedrals, which, far better than any theology, 
translated into stone the constructive aspiration of the 
Religion they expressed. 

_ Disinterested love, recognition of ideal values, and 
the capacity for devotion to them when recognised, 
seem to play such a small part in the struggle for a 
livelihood or for pleasure which pre-occupies most men’s 
minds, that there is a certain plausibility in regarding 
them as secondary and accidental products of the 
evolutionary process. Our analysis of the facts has 
shown that the contrary holds good. The rudder 
seems but a small thing, but its direction determines 
that of the ship; and progress has depended on the 
direction of energy and intelligence by the still small 
voice which bids man stake all on his intuition of the 
highest—on the love of truth, the love of constructive 
work, the love of fellow-man, these three; but the great- 
est of these is charity. 


CREATIVE LOVE 

The essential continuity between Man and Nature 
is the grand deduction to be made from Darwin’s great 
discovery. Once stated, the conclusion is all but self- 
evident. Its consequences are less so. The Creative 
Life that reveals itself in Nature at its sub-human level 
is, broadly speaking, non-moral and non-reflective; while 
the conspicuous differentia of Man is that he is conscious 
of ideal values and interested in the meaning of things. 
But, we have seen, in the tenderness of the tigress for 
her cubs or in the loyalty of the wolf to the pack there 
is the germ of what in man we call a moral sense. In 
the nightingale’s delight in the song of her mate, in 
the pea-hen’s admiration of the cock, there are the 
beginnings of an szsthetic sense. In some of the higher 


172 REALITY CHAP. 


animals the power of profiting by experience and of 
adaptation to unforeseen and unforeseeable circum- 
stances is evidence of a degree of intelligence all but 
reflective. Just in so far as these things appear in 
Nature, Nature is beginning to show itself to be the 
expression of a principle which cannot be described as 
wholly without a sense of values or without a capacity 
for conscious purpose and reflection. 3 

Man, especially philosophising man, proud of being 
so much more than an animal, has tried to forget that 
he is animal at all. Aware that morality often means 
refusing to follow the dictates of instinct, he has over- 
looked the fact that the highest morality is not the 
negation, but the sublimation, of natural instinct, ‘First 
that which is natural, then that which is spiritual’. 
There is an immense difference, but there is no absolute 
breach of continuity, between the care of the cat for its 
kittens and the tenderness of the mother for her babe, 
or between the attachment of the antelope to the herd 
and the loyalty of the citizen to his country. When 
instinct becomes consciously moral, it becomes something 
infinitely richer; it becomes aware of its own nature, — 
and of its own value; and with every such advance that 
value becomes greater—but there is nowhere a complete 
breach of continuity. But, just for that reason, if we 
ask the meaning of that element in the Life-Force which 
expresses itself in such instincts, we shall expect to find 
it in what the highest has attained rather than in that 
towards which the lowest seems dimly to be groping. 
That inward urge which prompts the mother bird to feed 
her nestlings before herself, does not reveal its real 
quality until we contemplate the Buddha renouncing the 
bliss which he had found in order to teach the Way to 
miserable men. The instinct which makes the sentinel 


VI CREATIVE STRIFE 173 


of a flock of mountain goats watch while its fellows feed, 
yields up its meaning when we look at Socrates choosing 
death rather than escape from prison, in loyalty to his 
country’s laws. 

But, the reader may object, are not the force and 
fraud, which Machiavelli and Nietzsche so extol, also 
foreshadowed in the animal, and must not they equally 
reveal something of the inward quality in the Infinite 
Creative Life? Not so. In the animal there is the 
vehement application of physical energy, and the use of 
elementary intelligence, for the attainment of ends 
desired; but the ends are always, at the animal level, 
legitimate ends, and their attainment by the individual 
is, broadly speaking, beneficial to the species as a whole. 
That ceases to hold when a creature has emerged who can 
discriminate clearly between selfish and unselfish ends, 
who has a standard of values and a power of considered 
choice. Man differs from the animal in that he can, up 
to a point, take charge of the direction of his own life. 
He can, indeed he must, choose whether to make his 
life consciously creative or consciously destructive. It 
is the fundamental contention of this book that life as 
we know it is a mirror of the Infinite Life. The Infinite 
Life is nothing if not creative; hence only when our life 
is functioning in a way that is actively creative can it in 
any sense mirror the Infinite. But in man, we have 
seen, energy and intelligence, when they take the form of 
force and fraud, become essentially destructive, that is, 
they are finding a perverted and non-creative expression. 
It is only when, and in proportion as, they are directed 
and controlled by the Will to Good that they become 
creative. The supremely characteristic manifestation, 
then, of the inward quality of the Infinite Creative Life 
is that which finds expression in the Will to Good. In 


174 REALITY CHAP. VI 


other words, Strife can create only if it be the expression 
of Love. 


Greece saw the vision of Cosmos, the order, beauty, 
law, behind phenomena; the Universe is the expression 
of Mind. 

India conceived the Dance of Shiva—Shiva, with the 
Sun and Moon as eyes and the Ganges spurting from his 
helm, dancing exultant in the flames; the Universe is 
the expression of Zest. 

India was right; Greece, too, was right. But it was 
a deeper insight, not merely a sublimer dream, that dared 
to say; the Universe is the expression of Love; that 
could see the inmost mystery of Creative Power unveiled 
in the figure of a man hanging on a cross for the sake 
of an ideal. 


Vil 


THE CHRIST 


175 


ie OR TS ok 
SYNOPSIS 


CREATIVE PERSONALITY 


The doctrine of the Divinity of Man is a source of inspiration or 
degradation according to the type of humanity regarded as ideal. 

The influence of personality is such that the appearance in history of 
an individual worthy to be regarded as the Ideal Man would have been 
uniquely creative. Is Christ such an individual? (Note—The historical 
evidence.) 


THe Cau 


The voice from heaven at the Baptism is, in the life of Christ, com- 
parable to the ‘Call’ of an Old Testament Prophet; it is a moment of 
realisation of vocation. 

Both this voice and the symbolism in the story of the Temptation 
must be interpreted in the light thrown by modern Psychology on visions 
and auditions. 

The Temptation expresses the conflict between the contemporary 
Messianic ideal and the moral ideals expressed in the life and teaching of 
Jesus. 


Son or Gop 


Inferences as to the mind of Christ which may be drawn from the 
words, (a) ‘Thou are my beloved Son,’ (b) ‘I thank Thee Father. . .’, 
and other sayings. 

All men are potentially ‘sons of God’—not slaves, but free-men. 


SERVICE 


As the free-man must fight the battles of the state, so the citizens of 
the Kingdom of God must serve and, if need be, die—Christ, the Son 
par excellence, leading the way. The conception, Kingdom of God, 
stands for an ideal which, by its very definition, is unsurpassable. 

To Christ the Crucifixion meant, not only personal disgrace and 
agony, but the rejection by His people of its national destiny. The 
moral grandeur of His act is obscured, if it be supposed that He had 
supernatural knowledge (as distinct from faith) that His cause would 
triumph. As an expression in action of the ideal of service, ‘the utmost 
for the highest’, His self-devotion has an absolute quality, it is a ne plus 
ultra. 


A Posrtive IDEAL 


The conventional emphasis on ‘sinlessness’ in Christ unfortunate: 
(1) It is impossible to prove a negative. 


176 


(2) It suggests that the moral ideal is mainly ‘to do no harm’. The 
New Testament suggests that there was both a real development of 
character and a real struggle with temptation. 

Granting that Christ did achieve moral perfection, this is to be seen, 
not in a negative avoidance of sin, but in His positive creative passion 
for righteousness. 


A MISscIvING 


Is not the Christ a little tame, and also impracticable? 

The criticism would be valid were not the conventional picture of 
Christ a misrepresentation of the actual historic person. This shewn 
under five headings: 

(1) ‘The man of sorrows’; (2) ‘The sheep before the shearers’; 
(3) Christ a ‘constructive revolutionary’; (4) The ‘Way of the Cross’ 
means not asceticism, but battle; (5) The higher common-sense. 


Tup IpeaL, or MAN 


The intellectual and esthetic tradition of Europe looks back to 
Athens, not to Galilee. Must the Ideal Man be an ‘Admirable 
Crichton’? 

Christ was a specialist in ethics and religion; nevertheless everything 
He said and did appears to be intellectually and esthetically, as well as 
morally, the ideal reaction to the actual circumstances. This illustrated 
by a detailed consideration of—(1) His intellectual powers. (2) His 
esthetic insight. (3) The element of finality in His moral teaching. 


Tue Mirror oF THE INFINITE 


The personality of Jesus is intensely individual, but at the same time 
it perfectly embodies a universal principle, viz. Creative Love. The 
appearance in history of such a person constitutes prima facie evidence 
that Creative Love is an element in Reality. 

Man asks no special assurance that among the attributes of the 
Power behind things are (1) Infinite might; (2) Beauty; (3) Bare 
rationality. Of Its purpose (i.e. of Its moral quality) he would know 
more. 

If in any agency there is purpose, that constitutes its essence. Unless 
God is as good as Christ, man can be nobler than his Creator. If love 
exists at all in God, it must be dominant, and therefore what He is. 


DocMs AS SYMBOL 


Dogma can be treated, not as an intellectual fetter, but as a devo- 
tional symbol. The concept of the Trinity, taken in this way, expresses 
the inscrutable mystery and supra-personal character of Reality. The 
concept of Christ as the ‘portrait’ of the Father gives to that mystery 
a luminous centre. 

But Christ is not an arbitrarily chosen symbol of the Divine; He 
can be that only because of what He really is, and of what God is. 


177 


VII 
THE CHRIST 


CREATIVE PERSONALITY 


THe doctrine of the Divinity of Man is one full of 
inspiration, but also full of peril. It may find expres- 
sion in the worship of the Christ; but also in the worship 
of Napoleon or Don Juan. The Will to Power and the 
Will to Pleasure are instincts so powerful that they 
have sometimes wrested even from Reason and Religion 
sanction for their claim to rule—witness the philosophy 
of Nietzsche in the West or the erotic cults of Krishna * 
in the Hast. The Will to Righteousness is no less truly 
human than the Will to Pleasure or to Power; but it 
develops later, and, like the heir to a contested throne, 
though born to reign may never wear the crown. Man’s 
divinity is a thing that he must win. 

Predominantly in childhood, only a little less in later 
years, character develops along the lines of the attrac-. 
tion exercised by striking personalities who seem to 
impersonate ideals. A man’s philosophy of the Universe 
and the code of ethics which he accepts—his Creed and 
his Commandments, so to speak—count for much, but 
the personalities that appeal to him count for more. 
Every one knows the difference that it makes to the 
‘tone’ of a regiment, a college or an office, whether the 

*It is the peculiar tragedy of Indian religion that Krishna, who in 
the Gita voices the loftiest conceptions of Hinduism, is also hero of a 


legend which makes him the Don Juan of the gods; and in certain dis- 
tricts the centre of a cult in which immoral practices have a place. 


178 


CHAP. VII THE CHRIST 179 


dominant personalities therein more nearly embody the 
Napoleonic, the Don Juan, or the Christ ideal. 

Thus it comes about that at the stage in Creative 
‘Evolution reached by man—the stage at which, in virtue 
of the possession of self-consciousness, a species becomes 
capable of taking, to however limited extent, an active 
share in the direction of its own destiny—dynamic-per- 
sonality becomes the centre of the creative process. 
Whenever a truly creative personality appears in history, 
the Power behind the Universe not only finds a new 
expression for some element in Its—or His—own nature, 
but also makes a fresh contribution to the actual task 
of creation. Not only is a remarkable specimen of the 
race, produced, but also, through him, there is effected 
a new constructive work. 

The inspiration of humanity is the roll-call of its 
famous men. But does any one of these represent 
an absolute ideal, an ideal, that is, which is wholly 
and without qualification worthy of imitation? And 
if we have no criterion, no objective standard of 
the ideal, how are we to say exactly where or to 
what extent any one model is defective? The very 
richness of our heritage of great men makes for con- 
fusion. Also an ideal tends to be dynamic in propor- 
tion to the clearness of its outline. There is, then, 
nothing intrinsically unreasonable in the idea that at 
some time in the course of history Creative Evolution 
should have produced a super-hero who could stand to 
humanity as the embodiment of a kind of super-ideal, 
capable of providing the rallymg standard which men 
require. Such a person, appearing at a certain stage 
of man’s development, would have been, of all possible 
variations in the species, the one most effectively 
creative. 


180 REALITY CHAP. 


To our fathers Christ was such a super-hero. Is he 
such to us? or must we look elsewhere for our Superman ?. 
Or are we to say that the Power—or Person—manifested 
in Creative Evolution has not as yet proved capable of 
this supreme creative act, and that we must do the best 
we can without it? ’* 

The remainder of this chapter is largely an attempt 
to give an answer to this question. It has cost me much 
thought and much labour; but, as I read it through 
once more in proof, there came over me a feeling 
of acute dissatisfaction. In discussing problems about 
Christ, I seemed somehow to have missed the Christ 
Himself. But, perhaps, that does not really matter. 
The Gospels are there; from their pages who will may 
find the Master’s personality in all its grace and majesty. 
And if what I have written leads any one to re-read a 


1Tirm HistoricaL Evimence.—Of the life of Jesus we know less than 
we could wish, but we know a good deal. Our documentary authorities 
are incomparably superior, for example, to those on which rest our 
knowledge of the Buddha. The allusions in the letters of Paul, though 
scanty in amount, are the evidence of an actual contemporary. Mark, 
the earliest of the Gospels, seems to have been written something under 
forty years after the happenings it records, and there is contemporary 
evidence (cf. B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels, p. 17f. Macmillan, 
1924) that its author was a resident in Jerusalem and a follower of 
the Apostle Peter. His story shows traces of that kind of enhance- © 
ment of detail which. where events recorded are remarkable, is a 
common phenomenon in reports by simple-minded persons who derive 
their information from others by word of mouth: but there is very 
little than can be dismissed at once as legend. In the stories of the 
Infancy, and a few other passages of Matthew and Luke, poetic legend 
has clearly been at work. But the bulk of the material in these two 
Gospels appears to be derived either from Mark or from written col- 
lections of parables and sayings of still earlier date, and Luke seems to 
have used an account of the Passion independent of Mark. For the 
life of Christ, then, we turn first to Mark, supplementing him to some 
extent from Luke; for the teaching we rely mainly on Luke and 
Matthew. The Gospel of John is a work of an entirely different char- 
acter, not a biography but a meditation. It is a mystic’s interpretation 
of the essence of Christianity cast into dramatic form. It probably 
incorporates authentic traditions other than those preserved in the 
Synoptics; nevertheless it should be read, as we read a dialogue of 
Plato or the book of Job; that is, for the sake, not of the incidents and 
situations, but of the thought they are selected to convey. 


VII THE, CHRIST 181 


familiar story with a freshened eye my purpose has 
been effected. 
Tue CALL 


A scholar who studies the mind of an Isaiah or an 
Kizekiel, will take as starting-point * the vision and the 
voice through which, to them, as to so many of the 
Hebrew prophets, there came the conviction of vocation. 
In the form assumed by the ‘Call’ of a prophet, both 
his own individuality and the essence of his special 
message are concentrated in symbolic form. It was 
through a Voice and a Vision of this same symbolic 
character that conviction reached the mind of Jesus, as 
He rose from the water after baptism by John, that He 
was indeed Messiah.” Curiously enough, many eminent 
critics, instead of seeking in this incident the key to the 
understanding of His mind and message, have on purely 
a priort grounds denied its historicity. 

At the end of this volume I have set out in an Appen- 
dix some facts which illustrate the psychological mechan- 
ism of experiences of this type; and have tried to show 
the vital necessity of distinguishing in such cases between 
the content and the form. The principle I have inferred 
from the evidence there adduced, 2.e. that their signifi- 
cance lies, not in particular psychological mechanism, but 
in their spiritual quality, requires special emphasis when 
we come to study some of those experiences which have 
changed the history of the world—the summons which 

“Tn attempting a synthesis of Isaiah’s character and teaching, it will 
be well to start from, and at every possible point to return to, this 
record (sc, Is, ch. vi.). The more clearly whatever else claims to 
be Isaiah’s can be related to this chapter, the more confident may we 
feel that the claim is good,” G. B. Gray, “Isaiah,” p. Ixxxiii. in Inter- 
national Critical Commentaries. (T. and T, Clark, 1912.) 

2 In Mark, the earliest of the Gospels, the words are, ‘coming up out 
of the water, he saw’; and there is no suggestion that any one but Jesus 


saw the vision or heard the voice. So also Matthew; in Luke, and still 
more in John, the original tradition has been modified. 


182 REALITY CHAP. 


brought Amos from following the flock, the vision that 
made Paul a Christian, or the voice that convinced Jesus 
that He was indeed the Christ. 

By the recipient of such a ‘eall’ its compulsive 
authority could not be questioned, ‘The lion hath roared, 
who will not fear? The Lord God hath spoken, who 
will not prophesy?’ * To Jesus from the moment of His 
baptism, whatever may have been the case before, it 
could not for a single moment be doubtful that He was 
the Christ. And to the contemporary Jewish mind— 
which was inclined to interpret the utterances of earlier 
prophets in the light of later Apocalyptic—Messiahship 
implied an office of far more than human magnificence 
and power. Only, therefore, in the light of the conviction 
that Messiahship had been authenticated by the voice of 
God Himself, can we consider how far the life of Jesus is 
an expression of the religious and moral ideal He taught. 

Matthew and Luke—drawing apparently on a lost 
document (Q so-called) which represents the earliest 
stratum of the Gospel tradition—go on to tell of a series 
of Temptations. One after another there are presented 
to His mind, in symbolic picture, aspects of the con- 
temporary ideal of what the Christ should be or do; 
one after another, luxury, empire, the appeal to marvel, 
are rejected as entailing faithlessness to the highest. 
The incompatibility between His estimate of moral and 
religious values and that picture of regal magnificence 
and easy triumph which religious tradition had associated 
with the Messianic office was fundamental.” The mental 
conflict entailed by such a crisis may well have found 


* Amos iii. 8. Both the ethical monotheism of the Jew, and the 
practice of putting a prophetic message in writing—to which ultimately 
we owe the fact that there is a Bible—go back to the new line struck 
out by Amos. 

° I have worked this out in more detail, and have also discussed at 
length the extent to which Jesus accepted the Apocalyptic views of the 
age, in my essay, “The Historie Christ,” in Foundations. (Macmillan, 

2. 


vi THE CHRIST 183 


expression in visionary experiences of the kind recorded 
in the Gospel story (p. 320 ff.); but a generation which 
worshipped Jesus as superhuman would never have 
guessed even the fact, much less the character, of such 
a conflict. Some account of it must have reached them, 
derived ultimately from Christ Himself. And He would 
have had reason to give the disciples some account of 
it. At Caesarea Philippi, Peter saluted Him as Messiah; 
at once, we are told, He began to point out that He 
was not Messiah in anything like the sense supposed; 
and in particular He repudiated, as temptation from 
Satan, Peter’s suggestion that the Christ ought not to 
suffer. This incident, or the period of esoteric teaching 
which seems to have followed it, was, I suggest, an 
occasion when He could hardly have avoided com- 
municating to His disciples the nature of, and the 
conclusions: reached by Him in, the spiritual conflict 
in regard to this very point which had accompanied 
His call. Jesus always taught (probably He also 
thought) to a large extent in parable and metaphor; 
and allowance must also be made for the possibility of 
a difference in matters of detail between the account 
as originally related by Him and as recorded in our 
documents. It is, therefore, safer to leave open the 
question whether the story of the Temptation should 
be read as conscious parable, or whether the scenes 
and voices described were originally seen or heard in 
visions. But that the voice at the Baptism, ‘Thou art 
my beloved Son’, was what psychologists style an 
‘audition, I do not personally regard as an open 
question. 


Son or Gop 


Visions and auditions seem normally to be dramatised 
projections of conclusions to which the self has arrived 


184 REALITY CHAP. 


in its subconscious ranges; but when they occur to 
great souls who have used themselves to deep com- 
munion with the Infinite, it may well be that they 
express something larger than the individual mind, and 
are indeed a veritable expression of the Divine. Never- 
theless, in these cases also it would appear that their 
actual form is mainly determined by the character and 
mental history of the individual and his race. It is 
not surprising, then, that, so far as form is concerned, 
the audition which assured Jesus that He was the Christ 
reflected a passage of the Old Testament commonly 
interpreted as Messianic.’ But we are entitled to draw 
large inferences as to the inner depths of the mind 
of Him who heard the Voice from the fact that the 
words echoed are not such as point to royal dignity 
or supernatural power, ‘Son of David’, ‘Wonderful, 
Counsellor, Mighty God’, but ‘beloved Son’, which 
suggest a personal relation between a human soul and 
the Divine. This note of personal intimacy, if one 
may so call it, between Himself and God can be felt 
in many of His recorded sayings. The prophets of 
the Old Testament believed that there was given to 
them, but only at certain intervals, ‘a word of the Lord’, 
from which they derived an absolutely authentic, but 
still only a partial, knowledge of God’s nature and 
His will for man. Christ always speaks as if He felt 
that He knew this fully and knew it all the while. Quite 
naturally, as it were, He substitutes for the prophet’s 
‘thus saith the Lord’ the simple ‘I say unto you’, 
To use technical language, in Him the ‘prophetic 

* Ps. ii. 7. The Western text in Luke ili. 22 reads: “Thou art my 
beloved son, this day have I begotten Thee.” If, as I believe (cf. The 
Four Gospels, p. 188), this is correct, and represents the wording found 


in the oldest source Q, the reference to the Messianic text is even 
clearer than in the Marcan version of the Voice. 


VIL THE CHRIST 185 


consciousness’, raised as it were to the nth power, is 
sublimated into the Messianic. But if He speaks with 
-authority, it is less the authority of status and of office 
than of direct intuitive knowledge. 

‘I thank thee, O Father, .. . that thou didst hide 
these things from the wise and understanding and didst 
reveal them unto babes’. To say this was, in a sense, 
to put Himself alongside the babes. Not the pedant 
nor the sophist, but he alone who, with the man’s 
courage and the man’s intellect, retains the child’s 
heart and the child’s direct simplicity, has the necessary 
equipment, so to speak, for understanding God’s parental 
love towards man. Would Christ have told others that 
to enter the Kingdom of Heaven they must become 
as little children, unless He had verified the fact by 
personal experience? Just because He was the first 
and only grown man of high courage and powerful 
intellect to try that and no other method of approach 
to God, he could say, ‘No one knoweth the Son, save 
the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save 
the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to 
reveal Him’. Thereby He won (or perhaps He did not 
have to win it) an insight into the nature of God that 
told Him that God not only is, but asks to be treated 
as, ‘our Father’. Those best worship God who think 
of Him first and foremost, not as Creator, not as 
Sovereign, not as Judge, but just as Parent to be loved 
and trusted. And if we may judge from words and 
actions which are clearly the spontaneous expression 
of the inner mind of Jesus, we must conclude that 
alike in sorrow and in joy this attitude was by Him 
completely realised. Legend had spoken of Abraham as 
‘the friend’ of God; Jesus thought, spoke and acted as 
‘the son’. 


186 REALITY CHAP. 


But this conviction of sonship to God, though in 
one sense unique, is not proclaimed by Him as an 
exclusive personal privilege; He is the pioneer, the one 
to whom and through whom the full secret of God’s 
goodness has been first disclosed—but now it is an open 
secret. The main burden of His message is that this 
parenthood of God, this overflowing tenderness and 
individual care, so far from being confined to the one 
unique Messiah Son, is for all—for the publican, the 
sinner and the little child. All are God’s children, and 
all who recognise the fact and respond in love and trust 
may aspire in the fullest sense to become the sons of 
God. They can become, and are exhorted to become, 
like God. 

Love your enemies ... that ye may be the sons of your 
Father which is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on 
the evil and on the good ... ye therefore shall be perfect 
even as your heavenly Father is perfect. 

Before Christ, the typical conception of God had 
been that of monarch; with the corollary that the good 
man was His faithful slave. Once to Ezekiel, prostrate 
before ‘the appearance of the likeness of the glory of 
the Lord’, there had come a voice, ‘Son of man stand 
upon thy feet and I will speak to thee’. Christ said 
that to all men. Stand upon your feet, realise your 
sonship to God, and He will speak to you; and, in 
that inspiration, all things good will then be possible 
to you. 

SERVICE 

From slave to son. The word xegensta—that citizen 
right of ‘free-speech’ which the old Greek republican 
loved to contrast with the servility of the subject of an 
oriental despot—is chosen by St. Paul (Eph. iii. 12) to 
summarise the difference between the new religion and 


VII THE CHRIST 187 


the old. But in the Greek world, along with the free- 
man’s privilege of speech, went the free-man’s responsi- 
bility to take counsel for, and fight the battles of, the 
state. So it is in Christ’s teaching. If God’s sons are 
free, they must enter into His purposes and fight His 
battles. ‘Strait is the gate and narrow is the way, which 
leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it?. The 
citizens of the Kingdom of God are a fighting aristoc- 
racy; but their objective is to give and not to get, and, 
therefore, their methods of warfare differ from the 
common as widely as their aim. It follows that the 
Messiah, who is the first to realise man’s sonship to 
God, must be the leader in that fight. Citizenship in 
the Kingdom of God brings inspiration and consolation, 
but also conflict, desolation and rebuff. In both direc- 
tions Christ says ‘Follow me’. To an enthusiast aspiring 
to discipleship He gives the damping warning, ‘The foxes 
have holes, and the birds of the air have nests: but the 
Son of Man hath not where to lay his head’. His special 
privilege as Messiah is just the unique service which 
He renders, the unique burden He takes up. The Kings 
of the Gentiles may delight in adulation and lord it over 
servile courts, but He whom God has chosen to fulfil 
the destiny of Israel, to be King of Kings and Lord 
of Lords, came not to be served but to serve, and to 
give His life as a ransom for many.’ 

‘As a ransom’ it is written. A price, it seems had 
to be paid. For the deliverance of suffering, erring 
humanity, to further the coming of the Kingdom of 
God—to realise, that is, an unsurpassable ideal—He 
must give His life. The Kingdom of God was a name 
for something conceived of by Him as being alike the 
climax of the working of Divine Providence and the 

1 Cf. Mark x. 35-45. 


188 | REALITY CHAP. 


goal of human effort. It is not surprising that a large 
literature has come into existence in the attempt to 
elucidate His meaning.’ An outline of that meaning is 
given in a clause of the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy Kingdom 
come,’ that is, ‘Thy Will be done on earth as it is in 
heaven.’ It is sufficient for my present purpose to point 
out that the ideal as here expressed has an ‘absolute’ 
quality. A state of things in which the will of God is 
completely realised in concrete fact is, by definition, that 
than which no higher can be conceived. Human prog- 
ress may go on to the end of time, yet from the nature 
of the case it can consist only in ever learning better 
how to fill out the detail of this grandly simple scheme. 

Jesus had pointed out to men the way to reach the 
Kingdom, but Jerusalem, even more emphatically than 
Galilee, had rejected this; there was left only the last 
desperate throw—to die for it. But the death which 
Jesus faced was not the death of a soldier or a martyr 
applauded by sympathetic friends—all had left Him 
disillusioned, and He had anticipated that they would 
do so. It was the death of a discredited pretender. 
More than that, it meant the failure of His own highest 
and dearest hopes—the hope that even at the last His 
beloved Jerusalem * might not prove blind to the hour 
of her visitation, that the people, who were His own 
people and God’s own people, in the hour of destiny 
might not play false. Popular theology assumes that 
Christ possessed a supernatural knowledge of the details 
of the future, and that a Resurrection and Ascension 
were by Him all through clearly and explicitly foreseen.* 


wg attempted to sum up the controversy in Foundations, 


p. 111 
* Mark xiv. 27-31. 
* Cf. Luke xiii. 34; xix. 41-44. 
*It is probable that some of the explicit detail in the prianen 
Mark viii. 31; ix. 31; x. 33f. (and parallels), is due to a modification 
of the original sayings in oral tradition, influenced by subsequent events. 


Vir THE CHRIST 189 


Such an assumption belittles the moral grandeur of His 
act. Doubtless He believed that His cause was God’s 
cause, and that therefore it could not finally be worsted; 
that God was the God of the living, and that therefore 
this life was not for Him the end. But to Him, as 
to other men, this was a matter, not of knowledge but 
of faith. To Him, as to any other of His time, crucifixion 
stood for torture, disgrace and death. But the rejection 
which preceded it made it mean to Him something which 
it did not mean to others—the failure of His life’s 
mission, the renunciation by His people of their national 
destiny. That was the cup which in Gethsemane He 
feared to drink. 

Called to an office of a majesty the highest conceiv- 
able, Christ lived a life of complete self-devotion to the 
service of His fellow-men in a cause which He believed, 
and with good reason, to be God’s cause; He braved a 
death of utter failure, torture and disgrace in the hope 
(not with the explicit knowledge) at that price to realise 
on earth an unsurpassable ideal. Such an expression 
in action of such an ideal has in it the quality of an 
‘absolute’; there is in its perfection a certain finality. 
Such a life is a ne plus ultra; it is not merely something 
which before or since has been unequalled; it is some- 
thing which one cannot even imagine as transcended. 


A Positive IpEau 

Apologetic theologians are wont to build large con- 
structions upon the ‘sinlessness’ of Christ. For two 
reasons this is unfortunate. 

(1) It is proverbially impossible to prove a negative. 
If it be urged that no sinful action is recorded of Him, 
it can be replied that the faults of an idealised leader 
are not the things which his biographers love to dwell 
upon. If, again, it be urged that anything of the kind 


190 REALITY CHAP, 


would be inconsistent with the whole character por- 
trayed in the Gospels, that is a stronger argument; yet 
in human nature unexpected inconsistencies are found. 
In this particular case it may plausibly be urged that 
any exhibition of the will to evil would be an incon- 
sistency so startling as to be psychologically incredible; 
but can a whole theology be built on the assumption 
of its impossibility? 

(2) The word ‘sinlessness’ suggests the idea, which 
has been the bane of popular ethics, that the highest 
moral achievement is ‘to do no harm’; whereas the most 
conspicuous feature in the teaching of Christ is His 
insistence that righteousness is positive and consists not 
in avoidance of error, but in being inspired by an over- 
whelming passion for good, and by an unquenchable 
love of God and man. 

A sentence in the Fourth Gospel, ‘which of you 
convinceth me of sin?’ is commonly quoted to prove 
that Christ thought of Himself as morally perfect. But 
this, like so much in the Fourth Gospel, may well 
represent the reflection of the disciple on the character 
of Christ rather than anything He Himself actually © 
said. More illuminating to my mind is the passage in 
Mark where, in reply to the somewhat ‘gushing’ greeting 
‘Good Master’, he replies, ‘Why callest thou me good? 
There is none good but one, God.’ From the days 
of the author of the First Gospel, who in the parallel 
passage modifies Mark’s phrase, theologians have striven 
to explain away the obvious meaning of the words. 
But why try to do so? Have we not an instinctive 
feeling that one who could explicitly think and definitely 
affirm that he had reached the goal of moral perfection 
would be, not the ideal man, but the ideal Pharisee? 
Indeed I would be bold to ask, ‘If Christ had affirmed 


VIE THE CHRIST 191 


that He had attained perfection, would He not by so 
doing have shown a certain lack of moral insight?’ 
Luke quite frankly says ‘Jesus grew in wisdom’, and 
in biblical usage the word ‘wisdom’ implies moral quite 
as much as intellectual insight. Character is something 
which is ever being enriched by experience, and the 
sublime assertion that He was ‘made perfect through 
suffering’ * has meaning only if we suppose that the 
character of our Lord never ceased to be so enriched, 
and only attained its full maturity in the World Invisible 
after the supreme experience of the Crucifixion. 

But to say that a character has not attained per- 
fection, in the sense of not having yet reached its full 
maturity, does not necessarily imply that it is defective 
through that actual exercise of evil choice which we 
call sin. And we may readily believe that this was the 
case with Christ. But if He avoided actual sin, it was 
not without real effort. Most men at some point in 
their career must face a struggle, a choice of Hercules, 
on the issue of which will depend the tenor and the 
quality of their whole life. The Gospel tradition, in the 
Temptation story, emphasises the occurrence of such a 
moral crisis in the life of Christ. 

Man is an animal, and he has godlike dreams; 
temptation may arise from either fact. Natural selection 
suffers no race to survive in which the primary instincts, 
for food and for the reproduction of the species, are too 
weak to spur into activity. In themselves both these 
fundamental instincts are good, but both may be indulged 
under circumstances in which the indulgence is evil. 
Where in a food shortage all are rationed, it is base for 
an individual to indulge an innocent and natural hunger; 
in a far greater variety of circumstances it is base to 

* Cf. Heb. i. 10 with v. 8. 


192 REALITY CHAP. 


indulge the other primary (and in itself equally inno- 
cent) instinct; so much so that many have come to look 
upon the mere possession of that instinct as wrong. On 
the higher side of man’s nature, temptation comes from 
the purely spiritual desire for power and admiration; 
and this temptation comes in its most subtle form 
when these allure by the thought of the influence for 
good which they might give. It is worth while to note 
that, in the testing crisis which determined the character 
of His career, Christ was assailed first by hunger, 
the simplest and strongest of the animal desires, 
and then by the most insinuating of spiritual tempta- 
tions—the power and position which offer influence for 
good. 

There is no reason to suppose that the Temptation 
in the wilderness was the only occasion in which it cost 
Christ effort to choose the better way. The strength 
that overcomes in great temptations has commonly been 
won through victory in small ones. Christ would not 
have become a creative moral force in history if at the 
age of thirty He had never yet—in things physical as 
well as spiritual—heard the tempter’s voice. Nor even > 
after this ‘Choice of Hercules’ was He—if we must 
accept the Gospel record—wholly free. ‘The devil 
departed from him for a season’, says Luke; and again 
‘Ye are they which have continued with me in my 
temptations’. And why, otherwise, in Gethsemane, face 
to face with the final conflict, did he crave the prayers 
of friends? 

Christ, we read, was ‘in all points tempted like as 
we are’; and the fight was not ended in a single round. 
If we conclude that, unlike us, He was enabled on each 
several occasion to overcome, we draw an inference in 


vir THE CHRIST 193 


accordance with the general impression produced by 
the records of His life. But an avoidance of moral 
error, even if it could be demonstrated to be complete, 
would be a merely negative achievement which would 
throw little light on the main problem of this chapter. 
The question whether Christ is the Ideal Man is one 
the answer to which practically decides the further 
question whether or no the Divine Creative Principle 
reveals Itself in the life of Christ in some unique sense. 
Now, whatever else it is, the Creative Principle must be 
something positive and active; Its trend and character 
cannot therefore be displayed by any mere negation. 
But it is just the positive, active, creative righteousness 
in the life and teaching of Christ which strikes us first 
and last. No doubt, could we detect any obvious and 
conspicuous fault in His character or actions, this 
impression would be to that extent weakened and 
impaired. But the defects which have been alleged to 
exist are so trifling and superficial that, even if they 
could be substantiated as such (personally I believe 
they cannot be’), they would relatively to the positive. 
good be, like the spots on the sun’s disk, practically 
negligible. Goodness is positive and creative; Divinity 
also must be something essentially positive and always 
creative. ‘My father worketh hitherto and I work, 
It is not on account of a negative sinlessness which, even 
if actual, is unprovable, but because of the positive 
quality in His life and words, and because in history 
Christ has been uniquely creative, that no discussion of 
the nature either of goodness or of God can afford to 
leave Him out. 


*See the admirable discussion by the late Dean Rashdall, 
Conscience and Christ, p. 169 ff. (Duckworth, 1916.) 


194 REALITY CHAP. 


A MISGIVING 


And yet, with all its commanding appeal, may it 
not be said that the moral ideal set forth in the life and 
teaching of Christ is in one sense negative? Is it not 
at least a little unpractical? Does it not under-estimate 
the value of self-assertion under proper circumstances? 
‘A beautiful character, but just a little soft, is a 
comment one sometimes hears. Hectically as he over- 
states it, has not Nietzsche something of a case? 

It should be admitted—rather it ought to be 
shouted from the housetops—that, as most often inter- 
preted in Christian art or Christian teaching, Christ’s 
ideal is not the highest. The portrait of the Christ 
which has been impressed on the general mind of Europe 
vs defective in certain positive moral qualities. It is 
worth while, then, to point out that precisely in 
regard to those qualities it differs from the portrait 
of the historic Jesus which we find in the first three 
Gospels. 

(1) ‘Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, 
and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.’ 
In their original context * these wonderful words are 
the wail of Jerusalem desolated by the Babylonian con- 
queror; written beneath a crucifix, as if spoken by 
Christ Himself, they are misleading. The best men do 
not make pitiful appeals of this kind for themselves; 
they incline to be silent about, or to understate, their 
personal sufferings. And that was the attitude of the 
historic Jesus, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for 
me’. Christ drank to the dregs the cup of disappoint- 
ment and despair; Isaiah’s words ‘a man of sorrows 
and acquainted with grief’ appropriately describe Him; 


* Lamentations, i. 12. 


vil THE CHRIST 195 


but He did not pathetically call attention to the fact. 
He wore, but did not advertise, a crown of thorns. 

(2) The argument from prophecy played a large 
part in early Christian apologetic. Diligently were the 
Scriptures searched for passages which by any possibility 
might be read as a forecast of some incident in the 
Messiah’s life. Christ had kept silence before Caiaphas 
and Pilate; in Isaiah were found the words, ‘He 
humbled himself and opened not his mouth; as a lamb 
that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before 
her shearers is dumb. The too literal application of 
this text has permanently discoloured the accepted 
portrait of the Christ. What was the real reason why 
Christ was silent before the High Priest? To plead 
one’s cause before a tribunal is to acknowledge it as one 
which at any rate desires to do justice; it is morally 
to bind oneself to respect the verdict. Christ knew that 
the tribunal before which He stood was not a court of 
justice, but a conspiracy. Had there been among His 
judges any desire at all to do justice, it might have 
been worth while to state a case; to beg for mercy 
merely He could not stoop. Before Pilate He kept 
silence for another reason. Pilate had a real, if luke- 
warm, wish to see justice done; but for the Messiah, 
condemned by His own people, to make any effort to 
escape with bare life, through the intervention of the 
magistrate of an alien and oppressive power, was 
morally impossible. Socrates, unjustly sentenced by 
what was, similarly, the supreme court of his people, 
felt that he could not worthily allow his friends to 
bribe the jailor to let him escape: and could Jesus, 
publicly condemned by God’s High Priest, speak a 
single word which might induce the pagan Roman 
to grant Him life? The silence of Christ before His 


+ 


3 


196 REALITY CHAP. 


judges was not that of the sheep before the shearers; 
its was the silence, not of meek submission, but of self- 
respect. 

(3) The submissiveness, which is an outstanding 
feature in the conventional picture of the Christ, is sheer 
parody of the historic Jesus. True, He taught and lived 
in practice a life of complete surrender to the will of God. 
But by Him the will of God was thought of, not as an 
arbitrary decree, but as the expression of the absolutely 
good. Surrender to the will of God meant to Him 
unwavering devotion to the Absolute Ideal, coupled with 
the recognition that both the path towards it and the 
price of its attainment is known to God but often veiled 
from man. Christ did not teach surrender to the will 
of man: least of all a docile submission to those men 
who claimed to be the guardians of a special revelation 
of the will of God for man. In His attitude to the 
religious authorities of the day Christ was a revolu- 
tionary. The notion that it is the duty of a religious 
man to accept uncriticised anything that the past has 
held venerable and sacred, finds no support in Him. 
Christ was conspicuously a critic of tradition. He was 
constantly condemning accepted conceptions of God, 
accepted canons of morality, and above all that eccle- 
siastical tradition by which the word of God, then as 
so often since, was made of none effect. 

Christ assuredly was not the mere iconoclast who 
loves destruction for its own sake; if He was a revolu- 
tionary He was a ‘Constructive Revolutionary’.» He 
realised fully the value of the religious heritage of a 
mighty past. He came not to destroy but to fulfil. He 


* In my essay under that title in The Spirvé (Macmillan, 1919) I have 
tried to explain on historical grounds the paradoxical fact that in 
Europe generally the Church, which professes to incarnate the spirit 
of Christ, has come to be associated with resistance to all change. 


Ee 


VII THE CHRIST 197 


brought out of His treasury things old as well as new. 
Yet in the main His eye was less on the past than on 
the present and the future; and He saw that for the 
sake of righteousness law must be sometimes broken, and 
for the sake of Religion the Temple might have to be 
destroyed. He had a passionate affection for the Church 
of His fathers, ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would 
I’. . ”; but He saw that when the fig tree had ceased 
to bear fruit it ought not, and would not much longer be 
permitted, to cumber the ground. His ‘churchmanship’ 
consisted in an effort at all costs to reform and vitalise 
existing thought and usage, not in the endeavour to per- 
petuate and defend the status quo. Where no principle 
was involved He counselled the keeping of the Law. 
‘Go show thyself to the priest and offer for thy cleans- 
ing... . ‘Leave there thy gift before the altar.’ But 
if Law or commentary stood in the way of humanity 
or freedom, He brushed them aside with the revolu- 
tionary dictum—‘the Sabbath was made for man’. In 
the Jewish theory Church and State were one; and in 
this State, organised as a Church, He was no anarchist. 
He did recognise, and ordinarily He obeyed, the legiti- 
mate authority of scribe and priest. But it is not for 
this obedience that He is known to history, but.because 
He also recognised that occasion may arise when the 
duty of rebellion has the higher claim. In the face of 
glaring abuses, He was not content merely to criticise 
in words. In driving out of the Temple the vendors 
of sacrificial animals, He committed an outrage on a 
trade sanctioned by public opinion and by the author- 
ities of both Church and State—that was why they 
crucified Him. He stirred up a hornets’ nest, and the 
hornets stung. 

(4) Christ was crucified. He had divined that 


198 REALITY CHAP. 


fate; and to all who would follow Him He promised— 
‘threatened’ would be the better word—a cross. He 
knew that humanity has. always persecuted its prophets 
and stoned those who have been sent unto it. But 
He had none of the ascetic’s passion for suffering for its 
own sake. John the Baptist was an ascetic; and 
Christ respected John. But He did not imitate John’s 
way; He claimed to better it. He came eating and 
drinking—He enjoyed life to an extent that scandalised 
His critics. He was inclined to laugh at the grave and 
solemn Pharisees; and they did not like it.’ 

Not only the progress, the very existence, of our race 
has daily to be bought with blood and tears; and suffer- 
ing necessary for the work’s sake, if bravely faced and 
cheerfully endured, ennobles and uplifts. But history 
shows that austerities, studiously devised as a means 
of spiritual self-culture, tend to produce a capacity for 
self-sacrifice only at the price of a fanatic limitation of 
the moral vision. The power of the ascetic ideal to make 
noble minds indifferent or even hostile to the highest 
moral and intellectual movements of their day has been 
the tragedy of religion in East and West alike. But it 
falsely claims the prestige of Christ’s example. Not for 
its own sake did He take up the cross, but only because 
there was no other way to the triumph of His cause. 
Even to the last He prayed ‘if it be possible, let this 
cup pass—though with absolute readiness to drink it 
if the cause required. 

(5) But, perhaps, at the back of our mind there still 
remains the haunting query, Is not Christ all, said and 
done, a dreamer of dreams, the very type of the unprac- 
tical idealist? We want our morality for every day 


foe the humour of Christ, cf. T. R. Glover, The Jesus of History, 
p. 49 f. 


vit THE CHRIST 199 


use. A moral ideal to be of real service must be com- 
patible with common sense; it must be one which, if 
put in practice, will work. 

The Greek used the same word (t6x«Aév) for the 
beautiful and for the good; and perhaps the deepest of 
all instincts in the human heart is the conviction that 
goodness, like beauty, has an intrinsic value. A heroic 
deed, a noble character, exacts our admiration. A fine 
action, like a fine picture, needs not to justify itself 
before the tribunal of common sense. But there is a 
lower and there is a higher common sense; and this 
latter is not a matter unworthy of the moralist’s con- 
sideration. It is necessary, then, to consider the morality 
of Christ from the standpoint of the higher common 
sense, that is, of practical effectiveness in the interests 
of human progress. 

The essence of common sense is to know exactly 
what you want to achieve, to make sure that your 
object is to you worth the price which must be paid 
for it, to estimate accurately the assets you possess and 
how best to utilise them. It is not common sense at 
all to strive after things which other people value, but 
which you yourself do not, or to strive after things 
which you do desire, but without counting the probable 
cost, and being willing, if necessary, to pay it. 

Christ knew what He wanted to achieve, He knew the 
price, and He was prepared to pay it. The resources 
available for the accomplishment of His aims, in the way 
of wealth, learning, position, or the support of those 
who had these things, were simply nil. He had His 
own clear insight, sincerity of purpose and unflinching 
courage; He had an absolute trust in God, and He had 
the devotion of a group of uneducated and not con- 
spicuously intelligent working men. Those were all His 


200 REALITY CHAP. 


assets. Yet as the result of What He said and did during 
a space of time—possibly four, more probably a little 
more than two, years in length ‘—He has left a deeper 
mark on the history of the world than any other one 
individual that ever lived. If to produce a maximum 
of results with a minimum of resources and opportunities 
is a test of practical sagacity, Christ affords a supreme 
example of that gift, that is, of that kind of com- 
mon ,sense which realises that for the sake of great 
ends great sacrifices must be made and great risks 
taken. 

There were times when the odds against Him seemed 
too great. There were moments when the stupidities 
and iniquities of His contemporaries seemed too gross 
for remedy and He almost despaired of men—‘Neverthe- 
less, when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith 
on the earth?’ (Lk. xvii. 8). There was a moment 
(I like to think) when He despaired of God, when to 
Him—as to so many since—it seemed that the Power 
which determines all things is in the last resort indifferent 
to the triumph of right or wrong—‘My God, my God, 
why hast thou forsaken me? From one who trusted 
God as Christ had done, who had staked all for a cause 
so obviously God’s cause, this ery attests the lowest 
depths of failure and despair. It is just because the 
Christ did so despair, did so, to use a slang phrase, 
‘touch absolute bottom’, that we feel His fellowship with 
us ordinary men. 

But had He failed? Grant, if you will, His belief in 
God, in immortality, in His own unique mission, to be 
an empty dream; grant, if you must, that everything He 
lived and died for was delusion. Yet to have succeeded 
during twenty centuries in imposing that delusion upon 
half the world is at least a practical success—and 


* T have discussed this point in The Four Gospels, p. 421. 


VII THE CHRIST 201 


is, perhaps, presumptive evidence that it was_ not 
delusion after all. 7 


Jesus, whose lot with us was cast, 

Who saw it out, from first to last: 
Patient and fearless, tender, true, 
Carpenter, vagabond, felon, Jew: 

Whose humorous eye took in each phase 
Of full rich life this world displays, 

Yet evermore kept fast in view 

The far-off goal it leads us to: 

Who, as your hour neared, did not fail— 
The world’s fate trembling in the scale— 
With your half-hearted band to dine, 
And chat across the bread and wine: 
Then went out firm to face the end, 
Alone, without a single friend: 

Who felt, as your last words confessed, 
Wrung from a proud unflinching breast 
By hours of dull ignoble pain, 

Your whole life’s fight was fought in vain: 
Would I could win and keep and feel 
That heart of love, that spirit of steel.’ 


Tue IppAL or Man 

The intellectual and esthetic tradition of Europe 
looks back to Athens, not to Galilee; and no amount of 
special pleading will make it plausible to maintain that 
Science, Philosophy or Art owe as much to Jesus as 
to Hippocrates, Plato or Praxiteles. Nor on the other 
hand can it be maintained, as some Christians have 
done, that because the stimulus to such activities is not 
derived from Jesus, they are of little worth. 

Again, reflection soon compels us to face the ques- 
tion whether, in view of the necessary limitations of 
individual personality, the conception of an Ideal Man 
has really any meaning. The inspiration to progress 


* Lines published anonymously in, and reprinted by permission from, 
the Spectator. 


202 REALITY CHAP, 


has usually come from individuals who, without being 
narrow specialists, have yet been eminent in some 
particular department. Like Plato and like Praxiteles, 
Christ was a supreme discoverer and creator—but only 
in one field. But can a specialist in some one depart- 
ment be regarded as the ideal for all humanity? Or 
must anyone who wants to realise the highest possi- 
bilities of human nature be one who, in a famous phrase, 
‘left no subject untouched, and touched nothing which 
he did not adorn’? Must the Ideal Man be a kind of 
‘Admirable Crichton’? 

The point here raised is one which has far reaching 
consequences for any theory of conduct. Quite obviously 
any practicable ideal for man must involve a certain 
element of specialisation. The things that are do-able 
are infinite, and no one can do them all; indeed no one 
can do more than a very few of them really well. The 
quality of a man’s life or character must be judged, not 
by the number of different things he does, but by the 
nature of the particular things he elects to do, and by 
the way in which he does these. It follows that the 


ideal must be, not to do every conceivable thing, but 


for each one to do the things which he personally can 
and ought to do—in the best way possible. But—and 
this I would urge is essential—the best way possible is a 
way which is intellectually and esthetically, as well as 
morally, adequate to the circumstances of the case. 

Christ was not an Admirable Crichton; He was a 
specialist in Ethics and Religion. It is worth while, then, 
to enquire how far everything which He said or did 
appears, if we scrutinise it carefully, to be intellectually 
and eesthetically, as well as morally, the ideally suitable 
reaction to the actual circumstances. 

(1) Intelligence is often confused with extent and 


<r 


VII THE CHRIST 203 


range of knowledge; or it is supposed to be identical 
with interest in science, philosophy, letters, or other 
so-called intellectual pursuits. That is a misconception. 
Intelligence shows itself in apprehending the exact 
nature of the particular problems with which the indi- 
vidual is himself called upon to deal; in seeing through 
the fog of contemporary sophism and misunderstanding; 
in detecting underlying principles which to most men 
are lost in a mass of detail or are obscured by accepted 
catchwords; in noticing the connection of things usually 
unrelated or the distinction between things usually con- 
fused;.in apprehending the importance of what others 
overlook or the relative unimportance of what they 
regard as central. It may best perhaps be described 
as a kind of ‘flair’, in virtue of which the discoverer, 
the artist, the true reformer—not to mention the man 
who really possesses that not too common quality known 
as ‘common sense’—seize at once on what is relevant, 
and discard or subordinate what is not. 

Intellectual quality of a high order is conspicuous 
in the incidental sayings of Christ, so notable for pith 
and point. What observation, what penetration, what 
concentration, do His parables reveal—never a trace in 
them of the prolix, the ‘sloppy’ or the confused. How 
apt the irony which counters the Pharisees’ complaint 
of the company He kept, ‘Healthy people (sc. like you) 
do not need a doctor’. How skilfully (as in the answer 
‘Render unto Cesar’) He will enunciate a profound prin- 
ciple, while at the same time eluding an opponent’s 
trap. The circumstances of His life presented neither the 
opportunity nor the need for Him to interest Himself 
in metaphysical speculation or scientific research; they 
did present both opportunity and need for a knowledge 
of the Old Testament and of current religious thought. 


204 REALITY CHAP. 


Extensive book-learning was not a thing He was called 
upon to acquire; but the books He had read were the 
best available, and He got from them the best they had 
to give. In regard to these He displays that insight 
which selects the really valuable and discards the 
rubbish, which in a confused process of development 
detects the fundamental ideas and the right and real 
direction, which in the name of the spirit dares to sit 
in judgement on the letter. Consider, too, the sublime 
unity of conception—of God, man and duty—that under- 
lies His philosophy of life. The more one ponders it, 
the more one realises it as the constructive synthesis, 
the creative simplification, of a master mind. If the 
test of intelligence is capacity ‘to see the point’, among 
those born of woman Christ is not surpassed. 

(2) Of the esthetic quality of the mind of Christ 
it might appear that we lack material to frame a 
judgement. Not so. Of course we shall not ask, What 
masterpieces of painting or sculpture did He produce? 
The particular work which He felt called upon to do 
neither required nor allowed of the concentration of 
effort on such activities. Nor could He have done. 
so without renouncing both His nationality and His 
mission; for the Jew was forbidden by his religion to 
make any graven image or the likeness of anything in 
heaven or in earth. But the esthetic capacity of the 
Hebrew race, disallowed the use of brush or chisel, had 
been concentrated entirely on the art of expression in 
words. Viewed simply as literature—judged, that is, 
by a purely esthetic standard—the Old Testament 
contains poetry, impassioned rhetoric, descriptive nar- 
rative, which may be rivalled elsewhere but which has 
nowhere been surpassed. Our question, then, as to the 
sesthetic quality in Christ is answered when we note 


VII THE CHRIST 205 


that, in the one art in which His nation had excelled, 
Christ showed Himself a master. Christ as artist must 
‘be judged by His achievement in an art which He 
practised, not by the absence of achievement in arts 
which He did not even attempt. True, the test is one 
which cannot be applied to Him without injustice. 
His parables and sayings were not written down at the 
time. They have come down to us doubly diluted, 
first by the fallible memories of His followers, and 
again by translation into a foreign tongue; the original 
context of most of them is lost, translation has obscured 
their subtler nuance and poetic rhythm. Yet for all 
that, judged simply from the esthetic standpoint, the 
words of Jesus are in the forefront of the world’s 
literature. 

Aisthetic capacity is at bottom an apprehension of 
value—which expresses itself, now in creation, now 
in appreciation. The two can never be completely 
separated, but its creative side appears most clearly 
in the artist, the appreciative in the critic—using the 
word critic to mean, not one who carps, but one who 
is supremely sensitive to finer shades of value. In 
parables like the Good Samaritan, the Lost. Sheep, or 
the Prodigal Son we can see the creative artist; it is 
more difficult to test what I have called the ‘critic’. 
The sayings of Christ have been, as it were, put through 
a sieve: those only have been handed down which 
seemed interesting, or useful for purposes of exhortation, 
to the rather commonplace and prosaic minds of those 
who first listened to Him. One saying only, ‘not one 
sparrow shall fall on the ground without your Father’, 
shows His love for animals; one only shows His love of 
flowers. And neither of these, be it noted, is reported 
for its intrinsic interest, but only because it serves to 


206 REALITY CHAP. 


illustrate a practical injunction; yet neither can be read 
in its context without our seeing that it is not a chance 
reflexion, but implies a deeply pondered conviction. We 
are justified, then, in pressing the full meaning of one 
famous saying. 


Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, 
neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even 
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 


Here is anesthetic judgement, simple, penetrating, sub- 
lime; and it is expressed in an esthetically perfect phrase. 
The idea has by now become a commonplace, the stand- 
ard of taste implied is one which most moderns would 
accept as obvious; but at the time 1t was new and even 
revolutionary. It is the one esthetic judgement of His 
which has been preserved; but it implies the possession 
of perfect taste. 

(3) The way is now clear to consider the specific 
contribution of Christ to moral theory. In a sense this 
has been done already; just as esthetic theory has little 
meaning unless it be illustrated in a concrete work of 
art, so a moral ideal will be effective in proportion as. 
it has found concrete expression in an ideal life. The 
greatest contribution of Christ to moral theory was the 
life He led, and about this I have said enough. Never- 
theless a moral ideal requires to be rightly defined in word 
as well as to be expressed in act. That is a point often 
overlooked. It is of small value to humanity that a 
prophet should die for his ideal, if the ideal itself be 
confused or false. If we are to affirm that Christ stands 
out above all other heroes and martyrs of our race, it 
must be for some unique sublimity in the ideal He taught, 
quite as much as for the completeness of the sacrifice 
which He made for its attainment. 


vit THE GHRIST 207 


Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind and with all thy 
strength. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 


By the selection from the whole range of Jewish 
literature of these two sentences, as embodying between 
them the essence of Religion and Ethics, Christ effected 
one of those master simplifications which not infrequently 
inaugurate new eras in human progress. Considered as 
a& summary expression of the moral and religious ideal, 
it has a quality to which the term ‘finality’ may 
properly be applied, in that it states a foundation 
principle which, so far as we can conceive, cannot in 
the nature of things ever be transcended. Once grant 
the existence of a Personal God—the source of all 
goodness, beauty, truth—love is the only adequate 
expression of the ideal attitude of man towards Him. 
Again, the maxim ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ has 
a quality which we may style ‘absolute’. As definition 
it cannot be improved upon; and the ideal which is 
defined is one towards which the higher minds in all 
countries and in all ages have been slowly and painfully 
feeling their way. And if it is a true ideal at all, it is 
completely true; for the simple reason that, zf the right 
track lies in that direction, you have here reached its 
end. Nietzsche, we know, maintains that a’ direction 
exactly the opposite is right, and that therefore this is 
an utterly false and corrupting ideal; but in so saying 
he traverses, not the teaching of Christ alone, but the 
moral sense of all humanity, and, as I have already 
pointed out, the lessons of biology, psychology and 
history as well. If the conscience of mankind has in all 
times and all places been wholly perverted, if Socrates, 
Confucius and the Buddha are to be counted the great 
deceivers of mankind, then, I grant, the maxim, ‘thou 


208 REALITY CHAP. 


shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’? is in perversity 
and deceit the most dangerous of all. If not, Christ 
has here stated—and that in a way that could not 
conceivably be improved upon—the principle and the 
criterion of that final ethic towards which all the rest 
were reaching out. And it is of all ethical principles both 
the simplest to apply and the most obviously fruitful 
in its results; for, as was shown in the last chapter, a 
society approaches to, or recedes from, an ideal state in 
exact proportion as the ethics of its individual members 
is inspired by this principle or the reverse. 

The formula, Love God and love thy neighbour, 
provides us also with an unsurpassable expression of 
the right relation between Ethics and Religion; the love 
of God is the precondition and the inspiration of the 
love of man, the love of man is the practical expression 
of the love of God. It is also an ideal which is impatient 
of any static conception of Ethics or Religion. So far 
from conflicting with the idea of evolution, it necessarily 
demands for its realisation an unending development. 
Only as man advances in personal morality can he 
really learn to love God; only as there is social progress 
can he effectively put in practice the love of man. 
As society develops and civilisations change, opinions 
will and ought to change as to the best way to make 
real and effective, in the individual heart and in the 
body corporate, the love of God. Methods of religious 
discipline, organisation, ceremonial and the like, which 
are well suited to one age, one nation, one temperament, 
may be found ill-suited to another. ‘There will be 
constant change in the ways of education, the codes, 
the institutions, which attempt to give practical realisa- 
tion to the principle of the love of man. Development 
in these ways may be never-ending. But the ideal 


VIL THE CHRIST 209 


as apprehended and as defined by Jesus does not admit 
of improvement or advance. It is either false or it is 
final. 

Tue Mirror oF THE INFINITE 

‘Christ is the greatest character in history, just as 
Hamlet is the greatest character in art’, wrote Clutton- 
Brock. A great work of art, while intensely individual, is 
always felt to be the expression of something universal. 
Thus Hamlet is not a type, but an individual; and yet 
up to a point every man is Hamlet. Just so Christ is 
individually Himself and no one else; yet, in a sense, 
He is humanity. There is hardly a saying or an action 
recorded in the first three Gospels which is not in some 
subtle way ‘characteristic’; of which, if we found it in 
some other book, we should not at once say, ‘That might 
have come from the Gospels’. Yet about the deeds and 
words of Christ there is always a haunting quality of 
seeming to be the expression of something universal. 
Let us try to analyse this impression. 

We cannot long reflect on the life and character of 
Christ without perceiving that it is a perfect embodiment 
in concrete experience of an ideal principle—the principle 
of Creative Love. It follows that the thinker who 
wishes to frame a conception of the Universe must 
regard the occurrence in history of such a life as a 
phenomenon of unique importance. The life of Christ 
is a fact; no theory, therefore, of the Universe can be 
intellectually watertight which is inadequate to explain 
this fact. And when a principle has been realised in 
concrete experience, we must ask how far it is repre- 
sentative of an element in Ultimate Reality. The fact 
of Christ, the actual emergence upon the stage of history 
of this transcendent personality, is an empirical phenom- 
enon which challenges explanation. For every effect we 


210 REALITY CHAP, 


assume a cause adequate to produce it. If the person- 
ality of Christ is the effect, is it not reasonable to infer, 
in that Infinite Creative Life which we must assume as 
cause, a character in which Love is an essential element? 

Few philosophers have fully realised the tremendous 
import of a personality whose mere occurrence in history 
compels us to face the possibility that Love may be even 
one attribute among many in the Power behind the 
Universe. 

(1) We are never in doubt about Its irresistible might, 
Its all-pervasiveness, Its infinity. That is obvious. No 
Christ was required to show us that man in the pres- 
ence of everlasting Nature is but a speck of animated 
dust, ‘an infant crying in the night’. What we want 
to know is the purpose (if there is one), the goal (if 
such there be) of this stupendous Process, the scheme 
of values (if any) towards the realisation of which It 
moves, Its attitude (whether kindly or indifferent) 
towards you and me. 

(2) Nor again is Its beauty the thing about which 
we ask for further light. “The Heavens declare the 
glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork’. . 
The esthetic quality of the Ultimate Creative Power is 
never far to seek. Nature, where it is unspoiled by man, 
blazons this abroad—in the starry heavens, the moun- 
tains, the sunsets, the lilies of the field. The occurrence 
of a unique personality in history is not needed to tell 
us that the Totality of things is beautiful. 

(3) Nor is it the bare rationality of the Power 
behind things for which we ask the evidence. Mankind 
has always found it hard to believe that this ordered 
Universe, so immensely varied yet so completely linked 
in one intricately co-ordinated system, could have come 
into existence without the direction of conscious Mind. 


vit THE CHRIST 211 


Those who, like Epicurus of old or the Scientific Material- 
ists of our time, maintain the contrary, maintain what 
to the plain man seems a paradox—to be accepted, of 
course, if irrefutably proved, but in itself antecedently 
improbable. 

Neither the physical nor the metaphysical, neither 
the rational nor the esthetic quality of the Infinite is 
what we are most concerned to know. But what, for 
lack of a richer word, I can only call its ‘moral’ quality 
is a piece of knowledge which affects our every act and 
every hope, which gives character to our every aspi- 
ration or achievement. More than that—the moral 
quality and purpose in the Infinite are not only that 
element in It which it is most important for us to know; 
they are also (if they exist at all) intrinsically the most 
important thing about It, they must constitute what 
Greek thinkers called its ovtcta, or Its ‘essence’, i.e. 
that which makes It to be what It is. This follows 
from our previous conclusion (cf. p. 150) that power 
is a shadow unless it be linked to conscious purpose. 
For this, if true at all, must hold of the Universe as well 
as man. 

This last point, self-evident as it is, is so often 
ignored that I will, at the risk of tedium, elaborate it. 
What is it that differentiates the force which shows 
itself in an electric current from that which shows itself 
in a growing tree? Is it its extent, or its quality? 
Is it the amount of ‘work’ that it can do, or the fact 
that it is alive? Ask again, what is the real difference 
between the life-force in a tree and ina man? The man 
knows what he wants; in him life is conscious, that is, 
capable of direction by a sense of quality. So too the 
essential difference between the life of one man and 
another, between the hero and the coward, between the 


212 REALITY CHAP. 


cruel and the kind, is one of quality, it lies in the nature 
of his aims and his ideals. But once it is realised that 
the distinctive character of any power which can initiate 
or direct action is constituted by its intention or purpose, 
that is, its own inner quality, it logically follows that 
awareness of the highest values and complete devotion to 
them (if these exist at all in God) must be His ‘essence’ 
Once think of the Power behind things as fully conscious, 
and it follows that the odstz of God must be conceived 
in terms, not of blank existence, but of quality. 

I may also recall the argument (p. 140) that, whereas 
from the standpoint of ‘pure reason’ God must always 
remain a mystery, yet His nature, so far as its quality is 
concerned, can be known if, and in so far as, in human 
personality life is manifested of such a character as to be 
qualitatively homogeneous with the Infinite Life. The 
‘absolute’ character which we have noted in the ethical 
quality shown in the life of Christ is such as to suggest 
that in this case that homogeneity is complete. 

May we, then, infer that the Infinite Mind is one 
which really loves the individual, that not one sparrow 
falls on the ground without Its caring. That is an infer- 
ence which follows in strict logic from the argument, 
set out in the last two chapters, for regarding human 
personality at its highest as a representative expression 
of the Life of the Infinite. But it is an inference which 
would lose half its cogency were it not that in Christ 
we see a personality whom we cannot but regard as 
adequate to be a Mirror of that Infinite; and that, for 
the very simple reason that the life of Christ forces us 
to face this issue: unless God is at least as good as 
Christ, then man is nobler than his Creator. 

But, someone may object, to argue thus from man to 
God is pushing the principle of anthropomorphic inter- 


vil THE CHRIST 213 


pretation too far? I concede the objection; we have 
reached the bounds beyond which human reason may 
~ not feel confident of its conclusions. But reason, at the 
point where it begins to fail us, is pointing clearly in one 
direction; it is possible, but it is not likely, that just 
beyond our sight the long straight road we gaze down 
turns backward on itself. Not proof, but all the weight 
of probability, points to the conclusion that in that 
principle of Creative Love, which in the life and char- 
acter of the Christ found for once undimmed expression, 
we glimpse the quality inherent in Reality. ‘The 
quality’, I say, not ‘a quality’. For love, where it 
exists at all, exists as a directing activity in the Being 
who loves, and, unless (as commonly in human lives) 
there is an acute internal conflict in the soul, it is the 
directing power. There can be no inner conflict in the 
soul of God. In that Life love, if there at all, must 
be the ruling principle, the most essential element of 
all—in fact, we must conclude, to use an ancient phrase, 
that God is Love. 


DoagMaA AS SYMBOL 


I have publicly associated myself with the effort to 
vindicate within the Church of England that freedom of 
thought and experiment which is for ever threatened in 
the name of dogma and tradition. But it is possible to 
treat dogmas, not as intellectual fetters, but as repre- 
sentations in symbolic form of that which cannot be 
adequately expressed in philosophic or scientific terms; 
and such a treatment has the historical justification that, 
at any rate during the first five centuries, dogmatic 
decisions were avowedly a refusal to accept definitions of 
belief in terms of the philosophy of that age. God in His 
totality must be That which transcends human compre- 


214. REALITY CHAP. 


hension or description. Within His unique Being there 
must for ever be something which is the counterpart of 
that living interaction of subject and object, that com- 
muning of soul and soul in love, which to us is possible 
only in a society of persons and a universe of things. 
Only in symbol can we name this supra-personal Person- 
ality. And no symbol is fitting which does not suggest 
a mystery inscrutable—beyond logic, beyond conception, 
beyond imagination. Such a symbol, saturated through 
age-long use with worshipping associations is the Three 
in One and One in Three, a symbol arithmetically absurd, 
representatively apt. 


ian mee Tne though the darkness hide Thee, 


God in three persons, Blessed “Tsinity! 


But, if the doctrine of the Trinity seems to make vivid 
to us the dark mystery of the transcendent ‘otherness’ 
of God, that of the Incarnation gives us back the vision 
within that darkness of a luminous centre. Christ is 
‘the image (eixoy) of the invisible God’. In Him 
‘the Word is made flesh’—the meaning of the Infinite © 
is spoken out. In that life and death is reflected, as 
im a mirror, the face of God. 

Recalling what was said in an earlier chapter (p. 45) 
about Truth and Representation, it is clear that, if God 
is a spirit whose essential quality is that which we 
call love, then Christ can, or rather must, be a repre- 
sentative symbol of the Divine. And He is that, not 
because we choose to make Him such, but by reason 
of being what He is, and having lived the life He did. 
He is that, but He is more than that. By ‘symbol’ 
we commonly mean something intrinsically diverse from 
the thing it represents—as a flag is diverse from the 


VII THE CHRIST Le 


country for which it stands, or as a written word is from 
the objects it describes. But if life instinct with love is 
the dynamic essence of Reality, then to describe the 
relation of Christ to God we require some stronger word 
than ‘symbol’, or even than St. Paul’s word ixdy, 
‘portrait’, for a portrait in marble or on canvas is essen- 
tially heterogeneous to living, breathing flesh and blood. 
Here both the portrait and its original are ex eddem 
materia, the Representation and the Reality are of the 
same stuff. It is in no impoverished sense that we recite 
the ancient phrase, Christ is ‘of one substance with the 
Father’; and to describe Him we shall find no words 
more true than ‘Son of God’. 


I bind unto myself the Name, 
The strong Name of the Trinity; 
By invocation of the same, 
The Three in One, and One in Three. 
Of Whom all nature hath creation; 
Eternal! Father, Spirit, Word: 
Praise to the Lord of my salvation, 
Salvation is of Christ the Lord. 





VIiTl 


THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 


THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 
SYNOPSIS 


LovE versus Law 


The fact of evil the great obstacle to reconciling the Kingdom of 
Law revealed by Science with Christ’s vision of God as Love. 

Yet evil is less fundamental than good; it is parasitic. Atheism has 
a solution of the problem of evil, but not of the problem of good. 


Tue ScHoo,t or MANHOOD 


Instead of asking how the facts of life can be reconciled with the 
justice of God, let us ask whether any other purpose can be detected 
in them. 

Life resembles a game of football. A dangerous game, which can be 
nobly or ignobly played, is a school of character. 

This no solution of the problem of evil; but it suggests the search 
for a dynamic solution—one, that is, in terms of the possibility of 
overcoming. 


JUSTICE AND THE REIGN or LAW 


The so-called inexorability of the Laws of Nature a fallacy of the 
imagination; the Uniformity of Nature is a sine qua non of any con- 
sistent action. The discovery of new laws does not further limit man’s 
freedom; it increases his power. 

The reign of law must also hold in the moral sphere. How then is 
the retrieval of moral failure, or the ‘forgiveness of sin’, possible? 

The ‘orthodox’ doctrine of the Atonement an attempt to solve this 
problem. But it states the problem in terms of human jurisprudence. 

Justice, in its legal associations, cannot safely be ascribed to God; 
for (1) Historically justice was a limitation of the individual’s right to 
vengeance. (2) In practice it is invoked to prevent evil rather than 
to create good. 

The Will of God must be conceived of as creative purpose—the Will 
to Good. Hence there can be no conflict in the mind of God—as there 
may be with a human magistrate—between Justice and Mercy. 

In Nature, life has a curative as well as a creative aspect; in the 
moral sphere we should expect the Divine Life to manifest this double 
quality—but under the limiting condition of the law of the inevitability 
of moral consequence. 


218 


In this world the operation of this law results, not in external penal- 
ties, but in the internal degeneration of the offender. 

Can God cancel this result? He can do so if He Himself (a) 
shoulders the burden of suffering caused by sin, (b) redeems the sinner 
—not by unmaking the act, but by remaking the man, (c) in so doing, 
vindicates the principle of righteousness. 

The question, How can God do this? concerns the qualitative aspect 
of reality. But, we have seen, truth of quality can only be conveyed 
by a ‘representation’ different in kind from those employed by Science 
and Philosophy. The story of which the Cross of Christ is the centre 
is such a representation. The mental attitude required if the individual 
is to respond rightly; the truth of the ‘representation’ can thus be tested 
by reference to the facts of life. 


FAILURE AND RETRIEVAL 


The degree to which the moral consciousness is awake varies 
strangely from man to man. But while the guilt of act depends on the 
extent to which the doer is aware that it is wrong, its evil effect on his 
character is inversely proportionate to the extent to which he regrets it. 

Repentance is evidence of moral advance already achieved. But 
continued advance depends largely on the individual recognising that, 
in spite of past failure, God loves him and still has a work for him 
to do. 

It is un-Christian continually to brood upon one’s sins and arti- 
ficially work oneself up into agonies of contrition. Admit frankly that 
you are a worm; but realise also that to the worm that knows it is a 
worm God gives wings. Psychological confirmation of this. 

The forgiveness of sin does not mean that the external conse- 
quences of past acts are cancelled. Nor, in one sense, are the internal. 


Tue Menraut Aspect or PAIN 


Pain is part of man’s environment; our problem is, How best can he 
adapt himself to it? A solution the more possible owing to the effect 
of mental conditions on the actual experience of pain. Even the pain 
of the past can, in its present effects, be modified by the right mental 
attitude. 

Tue New TrestaMent 


The New Testament does not regard this as ‘the best of all possible 
worlds’, but as one that has gone awry; but God, by entering into its 
suffering, is effecting its regeneration. 

Not all suffering has regenerative power, only that kind of which 
Christ’s is the type. The ‘natural’ result of suffering is degradation; 
but these ‘natural’ consequences are reversed in the case of suffering 
endured for the sake of an ideal. 


CALAMITY 


The suffering due to accident or the sin of others harder to bear than 
that of active martyrdom. 


219 


Criticism of the traditional view that calamity is the will of God. 
Belief in Divine Providence does not necessarily involve this view. 

Calamity to be met in a spirit, not so much of negative ‘submission’, 
as of active ‘acceptance’. Pain conquered is power. 

Possibility of redeeming the past in cases where suffering, through 
failure to meet it in the right spirit, has been allowed to discourage and 
embitter. 


Tue PAIN oF OTHERS 


Our despair in the face of the pain of others. Some possibilities of 
hope and help. 


A Lesson FROM PsycHOLoGy 


The natural instinct is to hide, even from oneself, experiences which 
have deeply wounded; but, so hidden, they may, as it were, fester in the 
subconscious mind. But if brought up into clear consciousness and 
discussed, it is possible to ‘reassociate’ them, that is, attach to them 
an altogether different emotional tone—with beneficial consequences to 
mental and moral health. 

Importance of choosing the right confidant, and (if possible) one 
with some psychological knowledge. The functions of a spiritual 
adviser. ‘Cast your burden upon the Lord.’ 

Psychologically considered, the distinctive feature of Christianity is 
its specific ‘reassociation’ of the idea of suffering. 


Tue Way AND THE POWER 


Religion as Power. Suggestions, practical and psychological, for 
realising this. Make the love of God in Christ the focal thought in 
prayer and meditation. 


220 


Vill 
THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 


Love versus LAw 


‘Auu’s love and all’s law’, wrote Browning. But was 
it the study of realities, or a temperamental optimism, 
that prompted this conclusion? The fact of evil stands 
like a grim fortress blocking the way which our investi- 
gations seem to be opening up between that Kingdom of 
Law which the Universe is revealed to be by Science, 
and that Vision of God as Creative Love which Jesus 
caused humanity to see. 

One thing is certain. Life on this earth is not 
ordered by a Love that succeeds in bringing happiness; 
nor in accordance with a Law that expresses itself in 
justice. ‘The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the 
ear filled with hearing’; and it is not true that prosperity 
or adversity are meted out to men in accordance with 
desert. That theory of the equivalence of suffering and 
merit, against which Job had long before cried out, 
received its final refutation on the cross of Jesus. The 
moral purpose of the Infinite, if such there be, is either 
something less or something more than justice. 

Yet that the Infinite has a purpose, that the quality 
of Reality in the last resort is good, my mind against 
all perplexity and bafflement continues to assert. All 
around us are death and disease, cruelty and injustice, 

221 


a 
% 
4 


222 REALITY CHAP. 


ugliness and stupidity. But death could not exist 
unless there were life, nor disease if there were no such 
thing as health. Evil is either conscious opposition to 
the good, or the result of wrong conceptions of the good 
or of the way to attain to it. Evil would not be what it 
is save In contrast to, or distinction from, the good. The 
world is full of evil, but it is also full of good, and the 
nature of things is such that the good is the more funda- 
mental of the two. Good might exist without evil, evil 
could not exist without good; for evil is either a parody 
of, or an obstacle to, good. Evil is parasitic. On that 
fact I take my stand. On this, in the last resort, I base 
my belief in God. | 

We speak of ‘the problem of evil’, but never of 
‘the problem of good’. We take the good for granted, 
and only ask the reason for the evil. Yet surely, what 
we ought to ask for is an explanation of the world as 
a whole. And if we really want to know what is the 
nature and the character of the Power which produced 
and sustains the Universe, ‘the problem of good’ is by 
far the greater problem of the two. If good is more 
positive and more fundamental than evil, the existence 
of the good is the thing which most needs to be accounted 
for. Here, as it seems to me, is the point where any 
form of atheism breaks down. The atheist has an 
explanation of the evil in the world, but he has no 
sufficient explanation of the good. 


THE ScHoot or MANHOOD 
Let us then cease for a while to ask why it is that the 
facts of life so constantly refute the theory that God is 
just; let us look those facts in the face anew, and ask 
rather whether we can detect some other purpose and 
meaning in it all. 


VII THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 223 


If we do this, we see at once that, though life is not 

at all the picnic party we perhaps should like, there 
is much in it which suggests a game of Rugby football. 
There is need for both team work and individual effort; 
there is conflict, pain and risk; there is the possibility of 
playing foul as well as fair; and there is the consciousness 
that, much as success is worth, what matters most is to 
have ‘played the game’. 


‘The chase I foilow far; 
’Tis mimicry of noble war.’’” 


A game of football is a mimicry of life as unlike the 
real thing as hunting is to war. Life is like life, and it is 
like nothing less; but if an analogy is wanted, that of a 
dangerous game, which can be nobly or ignobly played, 
is perhaps the least inadequate. For life is neither a 
banquet nor a dreary pilgrimage; it is neither a trading 
concern where all dividends that are fairly earned are 
punctually paid, nor a lotus-eater’s paradise; it is a 
school of manhood. 

Such a conception of the meaning and purpose of life 
would be congruous with our previous conclusion that 
the life and character of Christ mirror the quality of 
the Unseen Power. ‘He captains us, but does not 
cosset us’, as Mr. Wells says. Life is an arena in which the 
purposes of a God with such an aim might be attained. 

Look at the Universe from this point of view, and at 
once some—not all—aspects of the problem of evil take 
on a different shape. A world, in which there was no 
conflict and no risk, would be a world in which the heroic 
quality in man could never be called forth. A world, 
from which suffering or failure were completely absent, 
would be one in which compassion and mutual aid were 

1The Highland Chieftain in Scott’s Lady of the Lake. 


224. REALITY CHAP. 


absent also. A world in which the innocent never 
suffered from the follies or the crimes of others, where 
every one got exactly what he himself deserved, would be 
a world in which it mattered to no one but a man’s own 
self what he himself or any other did; it would be a 
world where responsibility, esprit de corps, brotherhood 
were unknown. i 

The problem of evil is not hereby solved. A world 
in which pain was impossible would be a world morally 
impoverished. But to admit this is far from admitting 
either that the amount of suffering in this world is 
no more than the minimum required, or that its actual 
distribution among individuals is the best. The recog- 
nition that a world, in which we suffer from one another’s 
faults and follies and are succoured by one another’s 
virtues, is better than one in which each individual was 
wholly self-sufficient, is not equivalent to an assertion 
that ‘the inhumanity of man to man’ is worth all the 
moral degradation and the pain it costs. 

But what these considerations do suggest is this. We 
can approach the discussion of the fact of evil in its rela- 
tion to the meaning and purpose of Creative Evolution 
if, and only if, we see the problem as one to be solved 
in dynamic, not in static, terms. We shall seek a solution 
in terms of process and possibility, not of a good already 
complete. We shall not attempt to explain away the 
existence of either pain or moral evil; and shall not hope 
to justify them, except and in so far as they are capable 
of being overcome. 


JUSTICE AND THE RriGcn or Law 
We cry out against the ‘inexorability’ of the Laws of 
Nature and man’s hard fate in that regard. In this there 
is a latent fallacy. The Uniformity of Nature is not the 


i 


VIII THE DEFEAT OF EVIL Da: 


inexorability of a tyrant callous to his victim’s groans; 
it is more like the immovability of the touch-line, with- 
out which there could be no game, though it would at 
times be vastly convenient to an individual player if by 
a miracle the line would approach or retire a yard or two. 
The Uniformity of Nature is not an iron cage against 
which we dash ourselves in longing to escape; it 
is a necessary condition of such freedom as we have. 
Theoretically, the problem how I am to reconcile the 
reign of law with freedom may be insoluble. Practically, 
unless I knew that I could reckon on things happening 
in accordance with some fixed and ascertainable prin- 
ciple, I might wish, but I could never act or plan. If 
fire sometimes heated, sometimes froze, the kettle, who 
could invite a friend to tea? If the laws of specific 
gravity changed from day to day who would venture 
in balloon or ship? Science is always discovering some 
new law; but this, so far from being the discovery of a 
fresh limit to man’s liberty, puts new power into his 
hands. 

It is not otherwise in the moral sphere. Conduct 
could have no moral quality, good or evil, but for the 
law of the inevitability of consequence. If lying, steal- 
ing, fornication, did not necessarily and always produce 
evil results, both externally to others and internally to 
the character of the doer; if, as often as not, they bene- 
fited their victims and had an elevating influence on 
their perpetrators, they would not be evil. If truth- 
fulness and honesty were qualities quite as likely as not 
to disintegrate society and demoralise their possessors, 
they would not be good. If any effect could come from 
any cause; or if in waking life, as happens sometimes in 
dreams, whenever a situation got too unpleasant, one 


© 


could extricate oneself by simply waking up, nothing 


226 REALITY CHAP. 


would in the long run seriously matter. In such a world 
morality would have no meaning. 

The ancients condemned as inartistic a plot in which 
the playwright brings in a ‘god in a machine’ to rescue 
the characters from some inextricable mess into which 
the natural development of events has led them. A 
God who regularly did this sort of thing in real life 
would make morality impossible. If any action, however 
evilly motived, might without any loss or cost to any- 
body turn out in every way all right, the ultimate distinc- 
tion between good and evil would have disappeared. In 
the last resort we are only justified in affirming that dis- 
tinction, if we believe that good inevitably leads to good, 
and that evil inevitably produces some kind of evil. 

The fact that the Universe is a coherent system, 
which we commonly speak of as ‘the reign of law’, is 
recognised by Science as the necessary background and 
condition of the whole process of Creative Evolution. 
All growth and progress is within and by means of the 
reign of law. But in the sphere of conduct thinkers have 
always found it difficult to reconcile the law of the inevit-— 
ably evil consequence of wrong with the possibility of 
the retrieval of moral failure, or (to use the language of 
religion) the forgiveness of sin. 

Quite the most interesting attempt to solve this 
problem is the so-called ‘orthodox’ theory of the 
Atonement. Strictly speaking there is no ‘orthodox’ 
doctrine of the Atonement; that is, in regard to this doc- 
trine there is no formula, like those defining the Trinity 
and the Incarnation, which has ever been officially 
accepted by the whole Church. But in popular usage 
the adjective ‘orthodox,’ is often applied to a group of 
somewhat divergent theories which ultimately derive 
from Anselm, the famous Archbishop of Canterbury 


VII THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 227 


under William Rufus. His theory was a great advance 
on previous speculation, and to an age that thought 
of the government of the Universe in terms of Law in 
the juristic sense, it was illuminating. To the present 
age, which thinks in terms of ‘Natural Law’, it tends to 
confuse rather than to elucidate the real issue. All the 
numerous later variations of Anselm’s theory agree in 
stating the problem of the relation of the Power behind 
the Universe to the fact of moral evil as if 1t involved a 
conflict between the Justice and the Love of God—a 
conflict which is resolved by one person within the 
Godhead paying to another the penalty properly due 
from sinful man. Such a procedure is analogous to that 
of a magistrate, who is compelled by the evidence to 
find an offender guilty and to impose a fine, but who is 
moved by compassion or some other reason to pay the 
fine himself. On the level of the administration of 
human justice such a solution is often the best possible; 
but any language or analogies which suggest that the 
methods or values of the Law Court are applicable to 
God are dangerously misleading. 

Judaism thought of Religion as the Law, and there- 
fore necessarily conceived of God primarily as Judge; 
and, though the teaching of Christ was largely a protest 
against this view, traces of it—more often in language 
than in actual thought—still survive even in the New 
Testament. Again, the Middle Ages inherited the 
Roman Jurisprudence, and this was the one secular 
science which then existed in a reasonably developed 
form; and since every age is bound to apply to philo- 
sophical or theological speculation categories derived 
from the dominant science of the time, the legal view of 
God and His relation to man was still further accentu- 
ated. Hence, while Christ thought of God as Parent, 


228 REALITY wie 


Christianity has laid the emphasis on the thought of Him 
as Judge; and since in a judge justice is the supreme 
virtue, it follows that justice, and that conceived of 
mainly as in ancient law, has been made the most funda- 
mental attribute of God. ) 

But justice, legally conceived, has inherent in it two 
implications which make it a quality which cannot with 
any degree of appropriateness be ascribed either to the 
purpose revealed in Creative Evolution or to the God in 
whom Christ believed. 

(1) Historically, justice arose as a limitation placed 
by the community on the individual’s demand for 
vengeance or restitution. Smarting with injury, the 
individual demands an unlimited revenge; but society 
steps In and says, ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth— 
no more; the measure of the punishment shall not be 
in excess of the gravity of the crime’. Justice is thus 
appropriately pictured holding scales, for justice was 
originally the acceptance by society of the individual’s 
claim for vengeance, only limited by the principle of 
the equal balance. That is why in Cicero’s speeches 
severitas 1s the regular word for honesty in a judge, the 
implication being that his business is to punish, and that 
he will do so unless influenced by bribe or favour. 
Philosophers still dispute as to whether the purpose 
of punishment is, or should be, mainly vindictive, 
reformatory or deterrent; but legislative changes and 
penal practice during the last century have been steadily 
moving in the direction of making less and less of the 
vindictive aspect. Originally it was not so. Justice was 
vengeance—controlled by principle, made righteous by 
impartiality. 

(2) The idea of justice has a second limitation. In 
real life the machinery of the Law Court is only invoked 


vit THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 229 


when some offence has been, or is alleged to have been, 
~ committed. And though in theory it is admitted 
that the ideal of justice is to reward good as well as 
to punish evil, in practice the administration of justice 
means of necessity discouraging evil rather than promot- 
ing good, and this fact has given the word a largely 
negative connotation. Justice we instinctively contrast 
with generosity, as being that which aims at putting 
down evil rather than at creating good. 

The Will of God, if God there be, is the creative pur- 
pose. With man the Will to Good consists in co-operation 
with that creative process. Evil is that which, whether 
through ignorance, carelessness or malevolence, antagon- 
ises or impedes that process. But to conceive the 
Creative Will: of which that process is the expression 
as adopting towards an offender an attitude resultant 
from a conflict between His Justice and His Love is a 
misleading anthropomorphism. A human magistrate, 
compelled, as the administrator of the letter of a Law 
imposed upon him by an authority superior to himself, 
to pronounce an offender guilty, but moved in another 
direction by what he recognises to be the worthy instinct 
of compassion, may find it hard to reconcile the two 
principles of ‘justice’ and of ‘mercy’. But the Will 
of God must be thought of as the embodiment offa single 
principle—the Will to Good. And since that principle 
must be conceived of as creative rather than destructive, 
we should expect it to express itself in action which is 
curative rather than punitive, generous rather than just. 
As Anselm himself, rising above the logic of his theory, 
finely says, justum est te bonum esse, ‘It is just that thou 
shouldest be kind’. 

In Nature life has a curative as well as a creative 
aspect; it expresses itself in the healing of injuries, as 


230 REALITY CHAP. 


well as in normal growth—but always in accordance 
with the reign of law. That life at the Divine level 
should manifest itself in the moral sphere in healing as 
well as in creating, is only what we should expect. But 
as we have seen, the reign of law also must hold in the 
moral sphere. The progressive, curative, restorative 
action of Creative Love could not operate without moral 
disaster except under the limiting condition of the law 
that no evil deed can be without its evil consequence 
and that in a moral Universe there is a sense in which 
‘all bills must be paid’. 

At this point clear thinking is particularly necessary. 
The idea that first comes to us is that the payment of 
these bills is, or at least ought to be, secured by a moral 
order which inflicts external pains and penalties on the 
offender. That is to say, we take for granted that the 
reign of law in the moral sphere is analogous to the 
punitive retaliation of criminal justice. As a matter of 
fact, so far as this world is concerned, the reign of law 
in the moral sphere appears to operate in a way far more 
analogous to that of ‘natural law’, 7.e. to be an invariable | 
nexus of cause and consequence. (What may happen 
in the next world is another matter; but to discuss this 
now would seriously confuse the issue.) No doubt 
in this world wrong-doing does sometimes result in 
unpleasant consequences to the offender, but only some- 
times; it always results in internal degeneration. In 
that sense—I shall expand the point later—no evil 
ever goes unpunished; and the ‘punishment’ is always 
exactly proportioned to the offence. We must ask, 
then, under what conditions can the Creative Will 


Tn regard to the ultimate fate of the incurably wicked, I may refer 
to the essay, ‘The Bible and Hell’, by C. W. Emmet, in the book 
Immortality, ed. B. H. Streeter. (Macinilian, 1917.) 


VII THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 231 


to Good undo this necessary consequence of evil 
. doing? 

(1) Merely to unmake the past—by a royal fiat or 
by some intervention in the manner of the deus ex 
machinéd—would be to violate that nexus of cause and 
consequence upon which depends (p. 225) the very pos- 
sibility for man of moral action. 

(2) If there is in the Universe any spiritual inten- 
tion, law in the moral sphere must have a qualitative 
character—a sanctity, if you prefer the word—which does 
not seem necessarily to attach to it in the physical sphere. 
If the normal operation of moral law is to be revoked, 
it must be done in a way which vindicates that sanctity. 
In criminal jurisprudence this vindication of the moral 
law—as recognised by the community—is secured by the 
public passing of a sentence, entailing the infliction of a 
penalty which zn a symbolic sense is a kind of equivalent 
of the crime, that is, can be regarded as being in a sense 
a ‘payment of the bill’.» But God may have other ways 
of vindicating righteousness. 

But though God is not limited to the methods of 
the Law Court, Anselm was right in that he saw the 
problem for philosophic thought to be, not that of 
punishment, but of forgiveness; he was right also in 
thinking that it is only soluble if we hold that in some 
way~or other God ‘pays the bill’ Himself. And that is 
done if God (a) shoulders the burden of the suffering 
that is caused by sin; (6) redeems the sinner without 
violation of the law of inevitability of moral conse- 
quenece—not by unmaking the act, but by re-making the 
man; (c) effects this in a way which, so far from 


* This idea I owe to conversations with Mr. W. H. Moberly, Vice- 
Chancellor of Manchester University, though I do not wish to make him 
responsible for my particular application of it. 


232 REALITY CHAP. 


impairing, actually vindicates the sanctity of the 
broken law. 

We ask, How can God do this? To ask that ques- 
tion is to repeat in other words the question, What is the 
nature of Reality in Irs qualitative aspect? and of all 
ways of putting that question it is the one which probes 
that quality most searchingly. Here then, if anywhere, 
we must beware of the pitfall of thinking that any 
‘representation’ of Reality in terms of the logic which 
science (or even philosophy) uses, can adequately render 
the truth. Here, if anywhere, the only possible ‘repre- 
sentation’ of the truth will be one of that character— 
akin to Art but totally different to Science—which 
alone, we have seen (p. 45), can adequately convey 
quality. Something of the nature of parable or drama 
is required. 

‘Who for us men and for our Salvation came down 
from Heaven . . . and was crucified also for us. It 
happened ‘under Pontius Pilate’; but ‘before the founda- 
tion of the world’ the Lamb was slain. In the Cross of 
Christ we catch, focussed in one vivid moment, the 
eternal quality of Creative Life. But, precisely because 
it is quality that is here expressed, to restate that expres- 
sion in terms amenable to formal logic is inevitably to 
miss something of its meaning. This is one of those 
cases (p. 65 ff.) where ‘truth embodied in a tale’ can out- 
soar Philosophy. 

The simple Christian who is content to look on the 
Sacrifice of Christ as just a ‘mystery’ is here wiser 
than the theologian who insists on analysing its 
intellectual content. Such a conception, if true at all, is 
so because of the truth of quality it represents; and the 
more it is envisaged, not as logic but as picture, the 
richer the truth 1t will convey. 


VIII THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 233 


But when a ‘representation’ is in story form, we 
require some test that what it represents is really true, 
that it is not a fairy tale. We must be able to show by 
reference to the facts of life that as a matter of actual 
experience the law of the inevitability of moral conse- 
quence is compatible with the retrieval of moral 
failure, or rather that it can be made so in the indi- 
vidual’s case—provided he adopts a certain mental 
attitude. That mental attitude was long ago defined— 
in that language of devotion which, outside a place of 
worship, rings a little strange to modern ears—as ‘faith 
in His blood’. What did this mean? It meant, I sug- 
gest, an attitude of self-forgetful response—a matter 
more of heart and will than of intellectual cogitation— 
to the idea, as bodied forth in that story, of the love of 
God to man. At any rate, it is worth while for us to 
enquire how far such a response does in point of fact 
bring the retrieval of moral failure within the range of 
actual possibilities. 


FAILURE AND RETRIEVAL * 


The modern man, it has been most truly said, is not 
interested in the problem of his sins. Unfortunately, 
hard facts, and their dismal consequences, go on exist- 
ing independently of the amount of interest that we take 
in them. Many of the more religiously minded have 
turned their attention from individual to social sin. In 
an age when to many thinkers civilisation seems doomed 
through the moral bankruptcy which expresses itself in 
War and the Class War, they do well. But social sin is 
largely the pooled result of the egoism, folly and 

*The remainder of this chapter is a reprint (by kind permission) 


with considerable modifications of my essay, ‘The Defeat of Pain’, in 
God and the Struggle for Existence (Student Christian Movement, 1918). 


234 REALITY CHAP, 


indifference of individuals; and the regeneration of the 
world will not be wrought if we rest content with 
the confession of other people’s sins. The kind of con- 
viction of sin, however, which this age requires will not 
come as a result of pulpit denunciation; it will 
come, if at all, from the effective bringing before 
men’s imagination of a positive ideal—in that sense 
preaching Christ crucified—and from a patient train- 
ing in the difficult art of self-knowledge. Once, how- 
ever, the individual’s eyes are opened to the futility, if 
not also to the depravity, of his own life, the problem 
of amendment becomes a live one. The old question is 
asked whether, and under what conditions, forgiveness 
of sin is a rational idea and a practicable possibility. 
On this point I would put forward a few considerations 
—superficially unlike, though perhaps fundamentally 
congruous with, the traditional teaching of the 
Church. 

Nothing is more remarkable in human nature than 
the varying degree to which in different individuals the 
moral consciousness is awake. You will find men and 
women who are perfectly unconscious that their lives 
are one long expression of ‘envy, hatred, malice and all 
uncharitableness’, who yet feel paroxysms of contrition 
because they are haunted by impure dreams. You will 
find others quite easy in their minds about a long course 
of sexual depravity but burdened with remorse for an 
unkind word. We do not ‘see ourselves as others see 
us’, much less as God sees us. Few of us know where 
our moral weakness really lies. Sin and the conscious- 
ness of sin are quite a different matter. 

There is a second no less remarkable fact—one, 
indeed, which largely explains the former. The guilt 
of an action is directly proportionate to the extent to 


or 


vit THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 23 


which the doer knows that it is wrong; its injurious 
- effect, however, upon his moral character is inversely 
proportionate to the extent to which he regrets it. This 
point is so important that it requires expansion. Every 
act is the expression of a previous tendency or disposition 
in the character; the doing of the act stimulates that 
tendency; repeated acts of the same kind rapidly create 
a habit, which becomes a chain by which we are tied and 
bound. Not only that; conscience defied becomes less 
sensitive. An act which on the first occasion was 
done with shrinking, after constant repetition is per- 
formed with equanimity. The ‘natural’ consequence 
of the commission of wrong is not the awakening, but 
the dulling, of the sense of sin. 

From this a conclusion of immense importance fol- 
lows. To feel constant and growing pain at the contem- 
plation of one’s own past guilt is already to have begun 
to reverse its natural consequences within the self. The 
consciousness of moral failure—I mean, of course, only 
when it rises to the height of acute discomfort—is a sign 
that the old self, of whose character the act deplored 
was a natural expression, is already dead or dying, and 
that a new self is coming to the birth. Repentance, 
therefore, is in itself an evidence of a moral advance 
already actually achieved. Its smart is the smart of 
‘orowing pains’. 

But in order to bring the new self to the birth the 
individual must, first, gain a clear perception of the 
nature and meaning of that pain, and secondly, must 
bring it into relation with the thought of his own value 
—actual and potential. His actual value obviously 
must be what God, in spite of all his failure, thinks of 
him; his potential value lies in what God, in spite of all 
his weakness, can yet make of him. At bottom this is 


236 REALITY CHAP, 


what the traditional Christian doctrine of the forgiveness 
of sins was really driving at, though obscured by language 
derived from the Jewish sacrificial system and by an 
obsolete psychology. Christianity has proved to be a 
‘Gospel’ just in proportion as it has stressed the idea 
(perhaps the most characteristic contribution made by 
Jesus to man’s conception of the Divine) that God stands 
there ‘declining to be estranged’, continuing to regard 
the offender as a being of priceless worth, for whom, in 
spite of all, He feels affection undiminished and hope 
unlimited. 

The dawning consciousness of moral failure and of 
its true nature is itself the beginning of a new birth, 
and contains and implies the possibility of further. 
erowth. But whether that possibility will be realised 
or not depends largely on the extent to which the indi- 
vidual recognises this attitude of the Divine, and thereby 
gives God the opportunity, so to speak, of fanning into 
flame the spark of higher aspiration. This is the pro- 
found truth underlying the old evangelical exhorta- 
tion to ‘lay hold of the salvation freely offered’, or | 
to ‘rest. in the finished work’—phrases which unfor- 
tunately disguise from our generation the truth which to 
our fathers they made luminous. Let the repentant soul 
realise that, in spite of all, he still has an infinite value 
for God, that there is still a work he can do for 
God and man, and that by the mere fact of sincere 
repentance he has already begun to establish a personal 
contact with a Higher Power—then at once the con- 
sciousness, and therefore the intensity and effectiveness, 
of that contact is indefinitely enhanced. A stimulation of 
vitality and moral invigoration begins which will lift him 
right out of that past which already, by the mere fact that 
he condemns and deplores it, he has partially outgrown. 

In current religious teaching there is an idea directly 


vill THE DEFEAT OF EVIL O37). 


contrary, as it seems to me, to the teaching of Christ 
- about God, and no less contrary to the lessons of modern 
psychology. I mean the idea that we should continually 
contemplate and brood upon our sins and work ourselves 
up into agonies of contrition about them. 

It is a curious notion that we do honour to God by 
behaving towards Him as if He had less of common 
sense, not to mention common justice, than a reasonable 
human being. God must estimate a man’s responsi- 
bility for his actions, not by the standard of an absolute 
ideal, but by the standard which he individually had 
reached at the time when he committed them. If he 
has come to realise that an offence is much worse than 
he supposed, that is a sign of growth in him; it is there- 
fore a reason for thankfulness." 

Contrition which comes to a man as the natural con- 
sequence of fairly facing up to his responsibility, the 
recognition of the fact that he not only ought to have 
known better but that he did know better, is healthy. 
It is quite otherwise if he tries to exaggerate his respon- 
sibility, and therefore his contrition, beyond what the 
facts warrant. The tendency to do this is sometimes 
the result of conceiving God as an offended Potentate 
who is the more likely to be propitiated by an apology 
the more the magnitude of the offence is stressed—the 
precise conception of God which Christ did His best to 
unteach. It is often the unconscious reflection of wounded 
self-respect. The humiliation which a man feels on dis- 
covering that he was and is a greater ‘rotter’ than he 
had dreamed, is the measure of the Pharisee in him. 
In so far as he is in this case, the effect of artificially 

* Particularly in regard to the burden of remembered offences com- 
mitted in early youth, often the best way one can give help is to min- 
imise their seriousness—to make the person see the offence as something 


which, though in a grown man an enormity, in a boy deserved ‘a flogging 
and have done with it’. 


238 | REALITY CHAP. 


stimulating contrition is really to stimulate spiritual 
pride. Once a man knows he is a ‘worm’ and cheerfully 
accepts the fact, he can begin to rise above the worm. 
But so long as he grovels and broods on his ‘wormanity’, 
he retards the process—for the secret of moral advance 
is to transform interest in oneself into interest in the 
Kingdom of God. Christ taught that God freely for- 
gives, but that it is the publican who most easily avails 
himself of that fact. To the worm that knows it is a 
worm, God gives wings. 

But whatever view we take on the religious issue, 
from the psychological point of view this emphasis on 
the duty of brooding over the enormity of the past is 
bound to be disastrous. Indeed, it is largely responsible 
for the most depressing of all facts in the experience of 
religious people—the incapacity to overcome habitually 
recurrent sins. So many spend their time bitterly 
repenting of, and after a brief interval exactly repeating, 
the same act. Their failure has a simple psychological 
explanation. To concentrate attention on the enormity 
of an offence, and upon the blackness of heart and the | 
weakness of will which can constantly repeat it, is really 
to submit oneself to a form of auto-suggestion which can 
only make the repetition of the act inevitable. The 
advice given by confessors in these cases is often the 
worst possible. So far from being told to deplore the 
past and dread its repetition in the future, the penitent 
should be advised to turn away his attention from the 
thought of his own weakness and sin, to concentrate on 
the power and the desire of God to help him, to think 
no more of past failure but of the possibility of doing 
useful constructive work in the world. It may take 
some time to undo the work of long-continued auto- 
suggestion, and to free the mind completely from the 


vIIt THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 239 


influence of bad advice and wrong conceptions—mean- 
' while let him cease to bother about this particular 
weakness.. Psychology confirms the teaching of St. 
Paul: leave behind the Law, with its associations of 
failure and of fear, throw yourself on the power and love 
of God as seen in Christ, and sin shall have no more 
dominion over you. 

The forgiveness of sin does not mean that either a 
past act itself, or its inevitable consequences to other 
people, can be undone. A repentant murderer cannot 
call his victim to life again; he may be fortunate 
enough to have an opportunity to make some amends, 
as, for instance, by providing for the orphaned children; 
but that does not undo the past. Yet, following upon 
genuine repentance, a moral re-creation is possible 
which can reverse the otherwise inevitable consequences 
upon a man’s own life and character, and so make his 
sum total contribution to mankind beneficent—even if 
he cannot overtake and make substantial amends to the 
actual victims he has wronged or rescind the conse- 
quences of his folly on his fortunes or his health. More 
than that, a character so re-created can effect certain 
things which seem to be outside the range of those who 
have never fallen and risen again. St. Paul’s conversion 
will serve to illustrate both these points. It could not 
bring Stephen to life again, but it turned the harsh 


1 Bad habits, physical and mental, whether the result of youthful mis- 
conduct, accident, or the lack of good advice, often get beyond the con- 
trol of the conscious will. If and when this stage is reached, or all but 
reached, they should be treated not as sin, but as disease. But in that 
case the patient is still morally to blame if he declines forthwith to take 
the necessary steps, and if need be to seek the best medical advice, to 
cure the disease. The mere suggestion that a bad habit or an obsession 
should be transferred from the category of sin to that of disease, to be 
treated quasi-medically (as one would a nasty ulcer), sometimes at 
once, more often after concentrated reflection on the idea, effects a 
cure, If not, a doctor or a nerve specialist should be consulted, 


240 REALITY CHAP. 


fanatic energy which had found expression in that act 
of persecution into the passion which made him ‘labour 
more abundantly than they all’. In addition it gave him 
an insight into the human heart, into the nature of the 
moral struggle and into the meaning of Christ’s life and 
teaching, which made him, next to his Master, the one 
who has made the deepest mark on the heart and mind 
of Europe. And, on a lesser scale, we all know men 
whose power for good seems to be directly conditioned 
by the fact that they have known evil and overcome it. 
Plato says that a physician should not be one who has 
always enjoyed the best health; and one who has him- 
self failed and been restored may sometimes be the better 
physiciam to the souls of others. 

O felix culpa quae tantam meruit redemptionem! 
Then, is it better to have sinned and been forgiven 
than never to have sinned at all? In St. Paul’s time 
there were some ready to draw some such conclusion: — 
‘Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound’? We 
may leave the answer where St. Paul left it. Logically 
it may be ‘Yes’; practically that answer could be given 
only by one who has never felt the experience from the 
inside. Such know that in all moral failure there is real 
loss. Some good thing which they might have done will, 
by reason of their failure, necessarily and eternally 
remain undone. And yet they know that, through the 
power and insight which they derived from the fact that 
they had failed and been restored, some other good 
thing has been accomplished which possibly—not 
certainly—but for that would have remained undone. 
In the taske of bringing about the Kingdom of God there 
is scope for the co-operation of very different types. 
There is one work for Mary Magdalene, another for Mary 
the mother of Christ. We cannot hesitate as to which 


vu THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 241 


of the two will stand higher in that Kingdom; but the 
_ other may still stand high. 


THe Mentau Aspect oF PAIN 


{ turn now to the problem of pain, and I do so with 
an interest not so much theoretical as practical. Pain 
is part of the environment in which we have to live. I 
ask how we can adapt ourselves to that environment, 
or rather how we can adapt the environment to ourselves 
—for the power to do that is the unique biological dis- 
tinction of man. Can we, instead of being crushed by 
the difficulties we have to face, use them rather as a 
stimulus along the route to individual as well as social 
progress? I ask whether, in regard to the suffering as 
well as the moral failure—past, present and to come— 
which falls within the experience of any individual, we 
can say, ‘There is a way out’. I suggest that, along lines 
indicated in the New Testament and confirmed by the 
teaching of psychology, each one of us may find a way 
in which to cope successfully with that particular share 
of the world’s evil with which he or she personally is 
brought into contact. I shall speak of the ‘defeat of pain’ 
as such, without any attempt to discriminate between 
pain which, like remorse, is connected with the conscious- 
ness of moral failure and pain which is not so caused. 

We are apt to underestimate the extent to which 
pain is of mental origin. Anxiety and disappointment, 
fear and regret, humiliation and remorse, the sense of 
desolation and despair, constitute the main burden of 
civilised man; and all these are of the mind. In normal 
times the amount of suffering due to causes entirely 
physical—wounds, accident or disease—would, for the 
majority of men, be a relatively small proportion of the 
whole; for the present generation the War has vastly 


242 REALITY CHAP. 


altered the proportion. But even the pain caused by 
physical injury is determined by mental conditions more 
than is commonly supposed. There are stories from the 
front of men in the excitement of battle or retreat being 
for a long while actually unconscious of wounds received. 
Experiments in hypnosis, by which sensibility to pain 
can be either enhanced, so that the touch of a finger feels 
like a hot iron, or reduced, so that the patient feels noth- 
ing under the surgeon’s knife, point in the same direction. 
Quite apart from these exceptional conditions, every 
doctor or nurse knows that the extent and acuteness 
with which pain is felt varies: enormously with the 
mental attitude of the sufferer. That patient feels pain 
most who most dreads it and who concentrates attention 
on it most. Moreover, the actual quality of pain and 
its mental and physical effects differ according as it 
is borne with cheerfulness or despair, with acceptance 
or resentment. 

If so much suffering is predominantly mental in 
origin, and if the mental element so conditions both the 
amount and the quality of the suffering which is physical © 
in origin, it is not enough to attack the problem of the 
world’s suffering from the physical side alone. It must be 
attacked from that side, but it is far more essential to 
approach it from the side of mind. And precisely for 
this reason the individual may have hope. He may find 
himself—he often does find himself—up against hard 
facts which he cannot alter, or burdened with a physical 
disability which cannot be cured. But, where circum- 
stances cannot be altered, it may still be possible to alter 
one’s mental reaction towards them. 

Especially is this true in regard to the past: this 
cannot be undone, but our reaction to it can be funda- 
mentally changed. I cannot unmake the sins, sorrows 


vu THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 243 


and disappointments of the past; but it is possible to 
change my attitude towards them so completely as to 
transform their consequences in the living present, and 
thereby, so to speak, to remake the past. Christ taught 
not only that sins can be forgiven, but that the broken- 
hearted can be healed, and I shall try to show that both 
the experience of everyday life and the conclusions of 
modern psychology prove that Christ was right. 


Tue New TESTAMENT 


In the New Testament no attempt is made to advance - 
a theory of why pain or moral evil are permitted to 
exist. Certainly there is no suggestion that this is ‘the 
best of all possible worlds’. On the contrary, so far 
from being the best of all possible worlds, it is a world 
that God meant to be a great deal better than it is. It 
is a world that has gone awry, and that mainly through 
the ignorance, the folly, the malice, the greed and the 
passions of men. But though the world is not now what 
it should be, God is not ‘just leaving things alone’, but 
is engaged in fighting the evil. God does not stand 
outside the world serenely contemplating the misery 
and the strife. He is, no doubt, in a sense outside and 
beyond the world, but He is also inside it, immanent in 
it, as the philosophers say; and by the fact of His 
immanence He takes His share in the suffering; and 
God’s share is, if I may use the phrase, the lion’s share. 

But this suffering is not just mere suffering with no 
end or result beyond itself. It is a means to an end, the 
means by which the ignorance, folly, malice, greed and 
evil passions may be overcome, the evil wills remade, 
and the results of evil action transmuted and undone. 
- Yet it is not all suffering which has this virtue. The 
suffering which has power is suffering like Christ’s— 


244 REALITY CHAP. 


suffering, that is, faced for the sake of causes and ideals 
like those for which He worked and died, or borne in 
the spirit in which He bore His. Christ, however, is not 
merely our leader and our pattern. He is also ‘the por- 
trait of the invisible God’. His attitude both to suffering 
and to evil is therefore representative of God’s. God 
shares in the suffering and captains in the fight. And 
God summons us to assist Him in the task, to enter 
into partnership with Him—and that not only in the 
suffering but also in the victory which it brings. 

This view of the power and possibilities of suffering 
requires analysis. Much cant is talked about the 
ennobling and purifying effect of suffering. To an 
animal, pain may be useful as a warning of danger or a 
spur to activity, but beyond the limited amount required 
for these purposes it debilitates and depresses. So too 
with man, the most natural effect of suffering is not 
to ennoble but to embitter, not to purify but to weaken. 
Joy is a necessity of life, of the highest life as well as of 
the lowest. The natural and normal reactions of the 
organism to suffering are vindictiveness, degradation, 
peevishness and despair. Where the contrary result is 
found it is because there is something in man, or at least 
in some men, which can counteract these ‘natural’ 
reactions. And this something does exist. 

That secret, dimly grasped by heroic men and 
women throughout all the ages, was by Christianity 
first publicly proclaimed: the natural consequences of 
suffering can, by the spirit and manner in which it is 
borne, not only be avoided, but actually reversed. Look 
upon suffering as a necessary condition of labour for any 
cause worth working for—whether it be the learning of a 
lesson, the production of a work of art, the bringing up 
of a family or the steering of a ship to port—and its 


Vul THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 245 


character is changed. Realise that the stupidity, the 
indifference, the malice and the selfishness of man have 
always been such an obstacle to progress that every 
forward step has been paid for in blood and tears; that, 
because casualties are the price of victory, sacrifice, 
pushed at times to the point of martyrdom, though not 
in itself a thing to be desired, is necessary and worth 
while—and things are seen in a new light. If it is in this 
way and in this spirit that the Divinity immanent in 
the world is suffering, striving, overcoming, then to take 
one’s share in the work is to be allowed, as St. Paul puts 
it (Col. i. 24), to pay part of ‘the unpaid balance (so it 
reads in Greek) of the sufferings of Christ’. Then, 
indeed, not perhaps every day and always, but at least 
in our moments of deeper vision, such pain becomes no 
longer a burden but a privilege. 


CALAMITY 

No great cause has ever lacked its martyrs, and it is 
not hard to see how suffering of this kind—suffering 
voluntarily risked, or even actually challenged, by the 
sufferer for the sake of a great work or a great ideal— 
may ennoble and inspire. But a kind of suffering 
harder to be borne is that which, whether it comes from 
accident, disease, or from the negligence or malevolence 
of man, is in no sense connected with, or the direct 
result of, our efforts for a good work or a great cause. 
Such suffering, so far from being a price which we pay, 
and pay willingly, for the sake of the work, is often the 
greatest of all impediments to it; indeed sometimes it is 
a ‘knock-out blow’ which, humanly speaking, makes 
nugatory all our hopes and all our plans. 

The old theology said, ‘Calamity is the will of God: 
submit’. But is calamity the will of God? The subject 


246 REALITY CHAP. 


is one upon which there is much confusion of thought. 
No doubt a God who creates and sustains the Universe 
is ultimately responsible for everything in it; whatever 
happens is in one sense the result of something He has 
willed. But in that sense sin, quite as much as suffer- 
ing, is the will of God—yet the very meaning of sin is 
that it is something contrary to His will. God is 
responsible for making a world which is a connected 
system—a system in which causes always produce their 
appropriate effects, where good produces good, and evil, 
evil, and where suffering is one of the effects produced 
by ignorance and sin. Without some element of risk 
and strain the highest type of character could not have 
been produced; again, unless the consequences of folly, 
ignorance or evil choice were really bad, life would be 
only a game in which, in the last resort, nothing really 
mattered. It follows that a world in which suffering 
and sin are possibilities is a world better worth creating 
than one in which everything was automatic, smooth and 
easy. Without freewill goodness, without risk courage, 
could not exist; freewill involves the possibility of sin, 
risk that of disaster. But we ought not to regard a 
particular disaster, any more than a particular sin, as a 
special ‘act of God’. 

To refuse to accept everything that happens as an 
exact expression of the will of God does not mean the 
denial either of God’s prescience or of His providence. 
An Intelligence which itself upholds the great inter- 
connected system of cause and effect that we call Nature, 
and to which the secrets of all hearts are open, cannot 
but know the trend and tendencies of things. God can- 
not but possess an actual foresight of the future which, 
even if falling short of that absolute foreknowledge 
which is compatible only with predestination, may yet. 


VIII THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 247 


in comparison with our human foresight, be styled 
- omniscience. Again, the experience of all religious men 
points to the conclusion that ‘there’s a divinity that 
shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will’. Both 
as regards individuals and groups, there is evidence that 
those who ‘wait upon the Lord’ (that is, who habitually 
concentrate their minds upon the Highest in quiet 
meditation, and act in response to inspiration so received ) 
often have unusual power to conquer obstacles, escape 
danger and, in spite of loss and failure, achieve high ends. 
Such facts point to a Providence watching over us, guid- 
ing us to wise and salutary choice, leading us to the help 
of others and others to our help. Doubtless other facts 
suggest that by reason of deafness and unresponsiveness 
on our part, or on theirs, God’s plan may temporarily 
miscarry. Yet the testimony of religious people is that 
they do often, to an extent quite unexpected, actually 
avoid disaster, they can ‘tread upon the lion and adder’; 
and that, where disaster does come, a way of recovery 
equally unexpected is in the long run provided. Where 
God does not prevent, He cures. 

The conclusion that we ought not to regard aceidents 
and calamities as ‘visitations’ directly sent upon us by 
God is one of the first importance for practical religion. 
It is almost, if not quite, impossible to look upon the 
loss or the disease which crushes or debilitates as a 
direct expression of the will of God and still whole- 
heartedly regard Him as our heavenly Father. In the 
past, and even in the present, there seem to be some who 
have succeeded in this apparently impossible endeavour; 
but certainly from ordinary human nature it is too much 
to ask for a real and true love of God, if men are taught 
to regard all the evils that fall upon them as ‘visitations’ 
deliberately sent by Him as chastisement or discipline. 


248 REALITY CHAP. 


Of course, if such a doctrine is true we must teach it and 
take the consequences; but if, as we have seen reason to 
believe, it is not true, then to decline to repudiate it 
frankly and emphatically is to take away the key to 
the kingdom of heaven and hinder those from entering 
in who otherwise might do so. 

As an explanatory theory, the view of the old theology 
that sickness or calamity is a characteristic expression 
of the will of God we must discard; but the practical 
moral which the old religion drew from it was, up to a 
point—though only up to a point—quite sound. 

To repine or to give way to resentment in the face 
of undeserved calamity is fatal. Unfortunately either 
repining or resentment are the natural instinctive atti- 
tudes to take up; and in so far as ‘submit to the will 
of God’ meant ‘put such feelings quite away’, 1t was 
good advice. But the right attitude to adopt is, to 
my mind, far better described if instead of ‘submission’ 
we say ‘acceptance’. Mere submission to the will of an 
external power is negative, it is a dull, drab thing; but 
acceptance of a share, still more the willing acceptance 
of more than our full share, in the tragedy of life—a 
tragedy in which God as well as man is an actor—is 
positive, it has about it something vitalising. 

Pain, like other elemental forces in Nature, can be 
turned to use, but only if the laws of its operation are 
first understood and then conformed to. Natura non 
nist parendo vincitur, but the ‘obedience’ by which 
Nature can be mastered is no merely passive submis- 
sion; it is an activity which may be called ‘obedience’ 
only because it functions always m conformity to laws 
and principles clearly understood. So it is with pain. 
Those who meet it clear-eyed and with a positive and 
active acceptance, who ‘face the music’, as the slang 


VIit THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 249 


phrase has it; those who are ready, not only to ‘do 
their bit’ in the world’s war, but to ‘bear their bit’ in 
the world’s sorrow, make a strange discovery. They 
find, not only that they are enabled to bear their sorrow 
in a way which hurts less—for what hurts most in the 
bearing is that which is most resented, what is most 
freely accepted hurts least—but that they achieve an 
enrichment and a growth of personality which makes 
them centres of influence and light in manifold and 
unsuspected ways. 

Few things avail to inspire and re-create the human 
heart as does the spectacle of crushing misfortune cheer- 
fully and heroically borne; the unconscious influence 
which those who act thus exert is far greater than they 
or others comprehend. Here is the element of truth 
in the common talk about the ennobling and purifying 
power of suffering; though it is not the suffering, but 
the way it is borne, that ennobles. Pain, not just sub- 
mitted to but willingly accepted, makes the sufferer 
socially creative. A man counts in this world to the 
extent that he has thought and to the extent that he 
has felt, provided always that he has thought and felt 
in the right way. Suffering rightly borne is constructive 
work. He who has ‘borne his bit’ has also ‘done his bit’; 
pain conquered is power. 

A few are able to bear their sufferings in this way. 
Most of us have failed to do so, or have succeeded very 
partially. We have allowed resentment and depression 
—which, I must repeat, are after all the natural reactions, 
physical and psychological, towards pain—to enter into 
our outlook even if not to dominate it. The suffering 
which, if we had accepted it as a privilege or utilised it 
as an opportunity—which is Christ’s way—would have 
enriched, ennobled and fortified our personalities, we 


250 REALITY CHAP. 


have faced in a way which has had the contrary effect. 
We have let 1t depress our enthusiasms, dim our ideals, 
sap our vitality. Is there a remedy for this? 

There is: but it is one which has rather fallen out 
of sight in Christian teaching. We are familiar with the 
idea that sin can be forgiven. We have all been taught 
that it need not remain as a standing source of debility 
in the soul, and that the repentance following after 
wrong-doing may actually bring about an enrichment 
and deepening of the personality—‘to whom little is for- 
given, the same loveth little’. But in ordinary Christian 
teaching this idea has only been applied to breaches of 
certain fundamental moral laws. It is not ordinarily 
applied to the failure to meet suffering in the right way, 
though this failure is a moral one as much as any other, 
and differs from other moral failures only in being less 
commonly recognised as such. But if it be true that sins 
of one kind can be, as we say, ‘forgiven’—that is, if 
their naturally evil consequences upon our personalities 
can be transmuted by a subsequent change in our 
attitude towards them and God—the same must surely 
be true of this kind of moral failure also. 

And experience shows that we can transform the 
past in this regard. We can bring up clearly into 
memory the times when we have suffered and have let 
that suffering fill us with resentment and despair. We 
can realise our error and deplore it, we can say to 
ourselves: ‘No; all said and done, I am glad that in 
the great tragedy of humanity I have played my part; 
I am glad that I have tasted of the cup which is the 
heritage of man.’ And in proportion as we can say this, 
and mean it, our whole outlook on life, our attitude to 
God and man, is changed. We are filled with a new 
joy—richer by reason of what we have endured; we 


VII THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 251 


are inspired with a sense of vitality and inner strength 
- more deeply rooted because of the experience we have 
passed through. The draught which when first drunk 
was poison is transformed into wine. The past is not 
undone; yet the bitterness and weakness which are its 
living consequences in the present are not only cancelled 
but reversed. 

Pain is a great teacher—it is not man’s only teacher, 
as some have seemed to urge; there are, I am sure, things 
which can only be learnt through joy—but it is a 
teacher whose lessons are difficult to learn. If at first 
we decline to learn them, we suffer more; for then we 
must endure, not only the original pain, but the grow- 
ing resentment or the life-draining melancholy which 
it entails. From this further suffering, consequent on 
our refusal to learn the lesson first offered to us, another 
and a different lesson can be learnt. But the actual 
learning of it awaits a fundamental change of attitude 
and outlook on our part, a wetdévote, which, like any 
other form of ‘conversion’, comes to one man by stages 
slow and imperceptible, to another with a sudden flash, 
and to others not at all. 


THE Pain oF OTHERS 

There remains the most difficult problem of all. 
How are we to take the suffering of others, especially 
of those we love, which we are compelled to witness 
but are unable to alleviate, and which in many cases we 
can see is not being borne—and under the circumstances 
can hardly be expected to be borne—in a way which 
can be otherwise than degrading and depressing? What 
of this? ‘There are times when, though we cannot 
alleviate their suffering, we can help them to bear it in the 
right way; could we completely succeed in this we might 


+ 


252 REALITY CHAP. 


perhaps, though with an effort, be content. But there 
are also times when, called upon to be spectators of 
physical agony, crushing calamity, or desolating bereave- 
ment, all our theories about suffering and its uses simply 
shrivel up, and, if we try to put them into words, we 
seem to ourselves to be as those that mock. 

Conquer by accepting. The principle that pain is 
to be met in this spirit, and not with resentment or 
despair, needs special reassertion when we thus con- 
template the pain of others. For it may be given to 
us by an act of penetrating sympathy to enter into 
their suffering and, so to speak, accept it for them, and 
thereby, either at the time or later on, help them to a 
right acceptance. Still more necessary is it to remind 
ourselves that God feels this pain as much as we do, 
indeed much more, by reason of His more perfect 
sympathy. This fact points to the solution: ‘Cast thy 
burden upon the Lord, he shall sustain thee’. God, 
too, is bearing the suffering, but He is bearing it in 
the right way; and in so far as we can open up our 
souls to Him, and through communion and meditation 
enter into His mind, we also begin to bear it in the right 
way. God’s way of bearing suffering, like everything 
else He does, is creative and constructive; in so far as 
we bear it in His way, the negative attitude of repining 
and resentment will drop away, and we too shall become 
constructive and creative. The right act or the right 
forbearance, the right word or the right silence, will be 
given us; and when these are impossible or inappro- 
priate, the right thought, the right feeling and the right 
prayer. And often these may be the most effective 
things of all. Men are all bound together by unseen 
telepathic ties of mutual influence. Each of us, by 
merely being what he is, contributes, for better or for 


VII THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 203 


worse, more than he knows to the mental and moral 
~ outlook of those he lives with, and probably of others 
to him unknown. He who is trying to bear the suffer- 
ing of those he loves, with God, for God and in God’s 
way, cannot fail to help them, and to help others also; 
though he may sometimes have to wait a long while 
for visible results. 

And in one respect we can afford to wait, for what 
we have found to be true in our own case must hold 
good in theirs also. Pain, we have seen, even though 
wrongly borne at the time, may yet be transformed in 
retrospect, and defeat turned into victory in later days. 
If, then, we believe that the growth of souls will con- 
tinue after this life, we can see a way in which even that 
suffering, which, because it was not rightly borne, has 
been wholly unprofitable and demoralising in this life, 
may one day be changed in quality and made the 
condition of a richer, deeper, nobler life in the Beyond. 

Upon many souls the dead-weight burden of the 
world’s sufferings acts as a paralysis to thought and 
effort. Considerations like those just urged may help 
such to turn from passive desolation to active energy. 
In the lives of most highly-sensitive natures there are 
moments when the individual feels as if he were an 
Atlas bearing up alone the burden of the world’s ill. 
It is not so. In the last resort it is borne up by 
God, and there are always ‘seven thousand in Israel’, 
unsuspected and unknown, who are helping us and Him 
to do it. 


A Lesson FRoM PsycHOLOGY 


Man has a natural instinct to hide away, from him- 
self and from others, experiences which have deeply 
wounded—in particular acute humiliation, undetected 


254 REALITY CHAP. 


moral lapses, occasions of acute terror or long-drawn-out 
apprehension. Supposing we succeed in half smothering 
or even completely obliterating the memory of these, 
so much the worse for us. To suppress all recollection 
or expression of such incidents is like trying to plaster 
down a boil. The emotion associated with the original 
occasion remains as a suppressed poison in the mind. 
It is always seeking to find expression by investing the 
circumstances of a man’s subsequent life with an atmos- 
phere of unnecessary apprehension, difficulty, or pain, 
thus burdening the personality in the present with 
the shame, the fear and the agony of the past. The 
result is often depression, neurasthenia and, in extreme 
cases, physical paralysis, moral breakdown, or loss of 
reason. 

If, however, the patient can be induced to remember 
clearly and to speak about the buried memory—the 
‘repressed complex’ as it is technically called—relief at 
once begins. It is as if the boil were opened and the 
poisonous matter let out. It becomes possible for the 
patient, either for himself or with the help of the psycho- . 
therapist, to begin a process of readjustment or ‘reas- 
sociation’, 2.e. of associating the event in his mind with 
an emotion of an opposite kind. He can, for instance, 
see for himself (or be taught by another to see) what 
was once a legitimate cause of acute terror or anxiety, 
as either a trifle which he can now look back on with 
a smile, or, though a real disaster, yet as one which he 
can contemplate with a feeling of thankfulness in that 
he has somehow won through; or, again, for the depres- 
sion of a vaguely realised disgrace he can substitute the 
satisfaction of failure retrieved or of guilt atoned for. 
Once this is done, especially if the patient can be made 
to see a clear relation between the emotion associated 


VIL THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 255 


with the past shock or act and that which he experiences 
in connection with some present anxiety, mental health 
begins rapidly to accrue.’ 

This lesson of Psychology has a very important bear- 
ing on everyday life. In every man’s experience there 
are some things of which he never speaks even to his 
most intimate friends—things which, when they start 
up in recollection, he strives, sometimes successfully, 
more often not, to exorcise from consciousness. Which 
of us has not memories from the past which stab and 
burn, memories of things seen, things suffered, things 
done, things left undone; memories of loss, disappoint- 
ment, humiliation, which we try, but try in vain, to 
bury? 

The habitual reserve that is characteristic of the 
English and the Scotch, in so far as it means that one 
does not carry one’s ‘heart upon one’s sleeve for daws 
to peck at’ or is unwilling to be for ever wearying 
one’s friends with the recital of minor troubles or petty 
peccadilloes, is to be commended; in so far as it is the 
expression of a high courage which disdains to exaggerate 
or seem to shirk its full share of the burden and the 
suffering of the race, it is to be admired. But psychology 
bears out the ancient proverb, ‘A sorrow shared is a 
sorrow halved’. And though to be always seeking 
confidants for one’s troubles or one’s sins inevitably 
leads either to morbid introspection or to shallowness 

1In acute cases of nervous breakdown it is sometimes found that 
hypnotic suggestion is required to complete the necessary ‘reassociation’. 
But in many cases even of acute neurasthenia, the mere fact that the 
‘repressed complex’ has been brought into consciousness, and that the 
patient can speak about it clearly and fully, enables him to put behind 
him both the memory and the emotions associated with it, and, as it 
were, permanently to detach himself from this incident in his past; 
which, until he clearly remembered and frankly spoke about it to some 


one else, had in a kind of way lived on, and formed part of his present 
mental outlook. 


256 REALITY CHAP. 


of character, an occasional unburdening of the soul is 
good for most. But it must be an ‘unloading’ of fears, 
worries, humiliations and disappointments, and not only 
a confession of what are ordinarily styled sins. 

Anyone who is haunted by the memory of some 
fright, some fault, some snub in early life, which he has 
never confided to a single person, would be well advised 
to tell it—not to all the world, but to some judicious 
friend who will listen sympathetically to the recital. 
Once these memories are expressed in words, one can 
for ever detach oneself from that self of long ago which 
did, thought and felt these painful things. One can view 
that old self with the eyes of an outsider and join one’s 
confidant in a smile of sympathy for the misfortunes, or 
of pardon for the sins, of the ‘poor little devil’ upon the 
stepping-stone of whose dead self the present man has 
risen to higher things. But—and this is the essential 
lesson of Psychology—until the failures of the dead past 
have been so expressed its putrefying corpse may, though 
we know it not, be still poisoning the present. 

It is harder to find the right person to whom to con- 
fide painful incidents of maturer years—the moral 
failures, the slights of which the most humiliating thing 
is that we feel them as humiliations at all, the moments 
of panic, the unworthy forebodings and apprehensions, 
the disappointments in love or in ambition, the haunting 
fear of loss, failure or detection which hangs above the 
head like a sword of Damocles; the follies, lapses, 
agonies of those we love. It is not only more difficult to 
find the right person to whom to speak of things like 
these; when found it is more difficult to bring oneself to 
use him or her at the critical moment. We are so often 
withheld from speech by the reflection that even when 
the cupboard door is opened the skeleton will still remain 


vitt THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 257 


a skeleton. But this reflection is the excuse, partly of 
our ignorance, partly of our desire to escape the humilia- 
tion of confession. The skeleton, it is true, will still 
remain a skeleton; but once the fresh air is let in it will 
—if our confidant be one who can give wise advice— 
become like a specimen in a museum, instead of the 
mouldering remains of a dead self. 

Many would do well to avail themselves ‘of some 
discreet and learned minister of God’s Word’, and were 
clergy and ministers trained to be ‘soul doctors’ one 
might universalise this advice. Unfortunately they are 
rarely so trained, and what training they do receive is 
based on an obsolete psychology. Spiritual advice will 
do more harm than good unless it is based on a clear 
recognition of the distinction between sin and disease, 
that is, between what is entirely, and what is not entirely, 
under the control of the conscious will. But to ascertain, 
in any given case, the exact degree to which the indi- 
vidual is responsible is a far more difficult and delicate 
process than most people seem to think. At least an 
elementary knowledge of pathological psychology is 
required, and more than an elementary knowledge of 
human nature. Precisely because his advice is likely 
to be taken more seriously, an unwise priest, like an 
ignorant doctor, can do more harm than other men; and 
whatever else may result from the laying on of hands, it 
does not in itself convey a knowledge of the human 
heart. Still, given sympathy, experience and common 
sense, the pastor, next to the doctor, has unique oppor- 
tunities of qualifying in that subject. Again, the 
ordinary man always approaches a minister of religion 
with the subconscious expectation that he is a man 
easily to be ‘shocked’, especially if the burdened soul 
be unorthodox in its beliefs. And since it is hard not 


258 REALITY CHAP. 


to live up to what everybody expects of one, it may 
often cost the minister an effort to free himself from this 
conventional réle. But let him make that effort; the 
minister of Christ is called upon to be, not the judge, 
but the physician of the soul. 

Happy, however, are those who from childhood have 
been habituated to cast their burden upon the Lord, to 
give free, frank, and natural expression in confident and 
spontaneous prayer to contrition, sorrow, fear, on each 
occasion, great or small, as it arises, realising God as the 
unseen Friend—ready to forgive sins, able and anxious 
to bind up wounds, a tower of defence in danger. Such 
find their prayer is answered by a courage enhanced 
and an insight sharpened, which enable them to look 
trouble and failure in the face, and before the bitterness 
has time to sink into the soul, to effect for themselves 
whatever ‘reassociation’ is required. 

It is an interesting reflection that the teaching of 
Christ and His apostles in some respects anticipated, 
in others went beyond, not, of course, the actual dis- 
coveries of recent psychology, but their practical lesson 
for everyday life. Psychology teaches that the first 
condition of healing is to bring up into the daylight of 
clear recognition the exact nature and quality of the 
wound to be healed; the New Testament bids us look 
suffering fairly in the face, and to recognise clearly and 
frankly admit our sins. The next step, says the psy- 
chologist, is to ‘reassociate’ the remembered episode, to 
‘re-educate’ the mind and heart, to change our attitude 
towards the past. Christ says the same: “Thy sins are 
forgiven’; ‘Sorrow shall be turned into joy’. Both 
say, ‘First face up to the past; then turn your back 
upon it’; ‘Believe that power is yours and according to 
your faith it will be done unto you’. So far they seem 


VI THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 259 


to say the same thing. But there is this great differ- 
-ence—Christ has behind Him a religion, a reasonably 
grounded philosophy of life." Hence the reassociation 
made by Him is more revolutionary and more profound; 
for He says of the wounds of the past, not only that they 
can be healed, but that out of them and by reason of 
them can be won an actual enrichment of the present; 
and He gives as the ground of this confidence the love and 
the power of God. Indeed, the feature in Christianity, 
which is perhaps most distinctive of it, is its specific 
‘reassociation’ of the idea of suffering. Here is the great 
difference between the Old Testament and the New. In 
the Old the problem of suffering is a constantly recurring 
theme; in the New, suffering is no longer a problem but 
an instrument of triumph, no longer a thing to be 
avoided, but a privilege to be claimed; and that because, 
illuminated by the Cross of Christ, it is seen as some- 
thing shared by God Himself, and as the means of His 
accomplishing the sublimest of all ends. 


THe WAY AND THE POWER 


I have tried to show that, whatever our view of the 
origin and purpose of the suffering and evil in the world, 
there is a way out—a way which, for the individual, 
is at once the most perfect adaptation to environment 
and the line of moral progress. ‘Granted’, some will 
say, ‘but “strait is the gate and narrow is the way”. 
When the bitterness, the agony, and the desolation are 
on us, or when it comes back to us in vivid memories of 

1 Tn practice successful psychotherapists largely accomplish their cures 
by suggesting ideas of hope, confidence and consolation, which is, in 
effect, providing the patient with at least the practical deduction from a 
Christian philosophy of life. Owing, however, to the tragic feud between 
Science and Religion—a feud which, it may be hoped, our generation 


will see healed—few eminent scientific men are in a position conscien- 
tiously to make full use of this source of power. 


260 REALITY CHAP. 


the past, it is not enough to be told there is a way out, 
we lack the power to tread it’. 

Precisely at this point Religion is seen to be vital to 
everyday life. For, in exact proportion to its truth and 
our sincerity, Religion 1s power. Conceive of God as 
Christ conceived Him, make a genuine effort to trust 
Him and to follow Christ, and experience shows that 
prayer, communion, meditation, will prove to be the 
road to power. ‘Salvation’—that is, inspiration and 
deliverance in one—is within our grasp. ‘Ask, and it 
shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find’. 

But if this be said, in the same breath a warning 
must be added against an unquestioning submission to 
the guidance, not only of popular manuals of devotion, 
but even of the great classics. Even in the best of them, 
language is occasionally used which cannot but suggest 
the idea that God is a jealous Potentate needing and 
liking to be placated by ostentatious grovelling. But 
to the precise extent in which any surviving elements 
of this pre-Christian conception affect our attitude 
towards Him, our prayer is likely to be a source of weak- 
ness not of power. A parent or a teacher can do very 
little for a child who is simply abject, and it is hard for 
God to speak with us unless we first obey the order, 
‘Son of man, stand upon thy feet’. 

The idea, so often recurring in the New Testament, 
that moral progress is secured, less by the effort of our 
conscious wills, than by a surrender of our whole man 
to Christ in joyful faith, is curiously confirmed by 
modern Psychology. Psychologists hold (cf. p. 284 ff.) 
that what I can or cannot do depends not only on the 
desires and the effort of my conscious self, but on the 
hopes, fears and convictions which have sunk deep 
into my subconscious mind. If my conscious mind 


vit THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 261 


believes in God but I am for ever anxious for the 
morrow, it is because my subconscious mind does 
not believe. The subconscious mind is always learning 
from the conscious, but it both learns and forgets more 
slowly. And the lessons it takes to heart most deeply 
are not the purely intellectual notions of the conscious 
mind, but the values and emotions associated with them. 
A man, for instance, may believe with his conscious mind 
that God is good and men are brothers, but only if he 
plans and acts towards the Universe and man as if these 
things were true, will his subconscious mind believe 
them also. If his conscious mind affirms the principle 
of love but he schemes injury to the brother whom he 
hath seen, it is the attitude of hate that the subconscious 
mind will learn. 

It is, therefore, not enough to assent with the mind 
to a philosophy that proves that the Power behind the 
Universe is one that works for righteousness; it is not 
enough to recognise with the intellect that for the 
individual sufferer there is a way out; we must so 
realise the meaning and the implications of these beliefs 
for feeling, thought and conduct, that they become part 
of our inmost being. But for this to happen, the values 
and emotions dominant in our conscious mind must 
dominate the subconscious also. Conscious and _ sub- 
conscious act and react on one another; but the con- 
scious, if it knows and wills, can in the long run direct 
the whole by selecting the ideas and values upon which 
to ponder deepest in moments of quiet meditation. 

You may call this ‘auto-suggestion’ if you like; 
whether, and how far, auto-suggestion is a bad thing 
I discuss later. But, good or bad, a certain amount of 
it is unavoidable. Do what we will, we cannot keep our 
mind a vacancy. The conscious mind is ever brood- 


262 REALITY CHAP. 


ing, ever dwelling on thoughts, hopes and fear which 
inevitably acts as ‘suggestions’ to the subconscious. We — 
cannot avoid some form of auto-suggestion; we can 
choose the form. Let us, then, select what our intellect 
at its keenest sees to be most true, what our insight at 
its acutest sees to be most beautiful or best, and medi- 
tate on this. ‘Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever 
things are honourable, whatsoever things are just, 
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are 
lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there 
be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these 
things’. More especially, as we compose ourselves to 
rest at night, let us remember to govern mind and 
thought. We cannot but ‘suggest’ to ourselves some 
thoughts, the effect of which will follow us next day. 
We have got to make a choice between thoughts of 
confidence or despair, of power or weakness, of love or 
hate. One way or the other, we cannot but decide 
whether our attitude to life and to the Universe—and 
that means to God—is one of doubt or trust; and in 
regard to pain, one of acceptance or resentment. Then 
let the choice made reflect, not the mood of the moment, 
but the conviction of a life. 

Amid the perplexities, the anxieties, the smarting 
pains of life, such self-control, such government and 
direction of our thoughts is hard. We need some focal 
point round which to centre our philosophy of power 
and help; we seek some beacon light upon the cliffi— 
visible however dark the night. 

And this we have. 

Direction, inspiration, strength can all be had from 
one source. Only let the needle of life’s compass be 
magnetised and free to move, so that it points always 
towards the Pole. Steer boldly straight ahead, ‘looking 


VIII THE DEFEAT OF EVIL 263 


_ unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for 
the joy that was set before him endured the cross’. 
Courage distills from that victorious love. Let prayer 
and meditation centre always round the thought of the 
Love and Power of that infinite and all-pervading Spirit 
of whom Christ is the portrait, and it will be possible to 
rise above the natural consequences of evil happenings, 
to make of suffering an opportunity, of loss a stepping- 
stone to gain, and to find in failure retrieved and pain 
conquered the secret of power. 


at Se ‘ 


ae hw 
. 





TX 


RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 


6S 
for) 
cre 


SYNOPSIS 
RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 


Tue Reon or LAw 


Our discussion will be futile unless there has first been faced the 
question, Does God exist? Assuming the existence of God, the problem 
of the bearing on Religion of the New Psychology is the old problem 
of the relation of Divine activity to the reign of law raised by the dis- 
coveries of Newton, and still more so by those of Darwin. 

Psychology attempts to apply the conception of law in the scientific 
sense to the operations of the human mind. The laws of Psychology, 
like those of Astronomy and Biology, are descriptions of the mechanism 
by which the Infinite works. Psychology is a branch of Science, not 
of Metaphysics or Moral Philosophy; but the facts which it deals with 
are of special importance in the philosophical discussions of Religion 
and ethics. 

Primitive Religion looks for the Divine in the irrational. Greek 
philosophy and Hebrew religion were, in different ways, a protest against 
this. Science fortifies this protest: it makes impossible any religion but 
the highest. 

In Psychology, more often than in the other sciences, the limitations 
inherent in the scientific conception of law are of practical concern. 

(1) Laws are not eternal necessities of Nature, but generalisations 
arrived at by human observation, and are often provisional in character. 

(2) Law, being based on classification, necessarily ignores individu- 
ality; freewill is by definition a function of individuality. 


PROJECTION AND THE IpPA oF Gop 


In the lives of the Saints and with other religious persons phenomena 
occur which are recognised as symptomatic of psycho-neurosis. But, 
it is notably the morbid, not the healthy, elements in Religion that are 
so explicable. 

Pathological symptoms often accompany genius. These perhaps due 
to (1) enhanced sensibility, (2) neurotic ‘overecompensation’ increasing 
‘capacity to take pains’. Anyhow, the significance of these symptoms is 
no greater when they accompany eminence in Religion than when they 
accompany eminence in other pursuits. The idea of Hell Fire and the 
conditions of life in the cloister might cause or enhance a neurosis; yet 


266 


-how are we to explain the exceptional vitality exhibited by many of 
the Saints? 

Evidence that, psychologically considered, Religion is a phenomenon 
characteristic, not of disease, but of health. 

(1) Conversion, viewed psychologically, is a movement away 
from ‘disassociation’ towards ‘integration’ of the personality. 

(2) Conclusions drawn from Abnormal Psychology do not always 
hold of Normal. The writers of Spiritual Autobiographies are not 
typical representatives of Religion. With the mass of men Religion 
is a force that makes for sanity and happiness. A psychological 
opinion in support of this. Religion is ‘natural’ to man, and cor- 
responds to an inner ‘urge to completeness’. 

(3) Neurosis may account for fanaticism, but not for insight, in 
Religion. 

The element of truth in the statement that the idea of God is a pro- 
jection. Man’s reaction to the Universe must be emotionally as well as 
intellectually the right one; but an emotional, like an intellectual, 
reaction will be largely determined by previous experience. If God is 
‘our Heavenly Father’, then the right reaction towards Him must be 
analogous to that of a child towards its father; with the all-important 
proviso that we mean the reaction of a psychologically healthy child 
towards a good and sensible father, and not the pathological reaction 
known as a ‘father-complex’. 


AUTO-SUGGESTION AND PRAYER 


Auto-suggestion briefly described. Its effect depends upon suggesti- 
bility, that is, on capacity for accepting an idea in the sub-conscious, 
which once so accepted will work. A modern experiment showing that 
the stigmatisation of St. Francis was probably an extreme case of this 
phenomenon. 

Three striking analogies between the mechanism of auto-suggestion 
and the methods of prayer practised by the saints and mystics. 

Recalling our previous conclusion as to the relation of Divine activity 
to the reign of law, we note that auto-suggestion is merely a name for 
the psychological mechanism by which an idea is appropriated by the 
sub-conscious—quite apart from its truth or falsehood. If God exists, it 
does not matter by what name we call the psychological mechanism by 
which we appropriate a true idea of Him. Also, if God is ‘the Beyond 
that is also Within’, it is only from within that we can know Him; we 
should therefore expect communion with Him to take place in accord- 
ance with the normal laws governing the internal operation of the mind. 

Two essential differences between the method of M. Coué and those 
of the mystics. 

(1) In the system of M. Coué the idea is spontaneously chosen, and 
that without any regard to its truth. In prayer the idea of God is given; 
and it is accepted because it is the Truth. 


267 


(2) Prayer is an ascent of the mind to that which is more real than 
itself; auto-suggestion is a submission of the mind to an idea which is 
its own creation. The one is the inspiration of contact with a person- 
ality greater than the self; the other is of the nature of ‘dope’. 

Prayer and the development of individuality. 

A misgiving. May not some traditional methods of devotion tend in 
practice to confuse these distinctions—with the result that prayer may 
degenerate into something little better than pious auto-suggestion? The 
test of true prayer. 


TELEPATHY AND INTERCESSION 


Man is a social animal; if, therefore, petitionary prayer of any kind 
is justified, it must be concerned with the needs of others as well as 
with one’s own. 

But does it do them any good? There is evidence that it does, This 
granted, light may possibly be thrown on the way in which it works by 
the obscure phenomenon known as ‘telepathy’. 

Psychic influence appears to be exercise by one mind on another 
(1) where persons are actually present, (2) more rarely, at a distance. 

But prayer for others is in no sense an attempt to practise telepathy, 
much less hypnosis at long range; it is addressed to God. Yet it may 
well be that, when a mind is raised above its normal level through the 
act of communion with the Divine, God uses any latent psychic powers 
of that mind to fulfil His own purposes. If He does this, we should 
expect these powers to operate in accordance with the laws (at present 
very little known) of telepathy. 

Caution against the tendency to think of God as a benevolent third- 
party, wholly external both to him who prays and to him for whom 
prayer is made. A ‘myth’ about what happens when we pray for others. 

In Him all live and move and have their being; in prayer this fact is 
consciously realised. 


VISION AND POWER 


From the psychological fact that an idea, once accepted into the 
depths of the sub-conscious, produces remarkable results, we deduce the 
vital importance of a right conception of God. 

The harm done by Idolatry, that is to say, by the setting up before 
the mind’s eye of a conception of God which is not the highest. Chris- 
tians have often, in effect, been guilty of this by not being sufficiently 
thorough-going in thinking of God in terms of Christ. 

But if God is conceived of in terms of Christ, Psychology suggests 
a mechanism by which the Vision of such a God, appropriated in prayer, 
may be transformed into Power—perhaps with world-shaking results. 

If Vision is to inspire to high achievement, there is need, on psycho- 
logical grounds, of a dynamic symbol which can serve as a rallying 
standard. Such a standard we have in the Cross of Christ. 


268 


IX 
RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 


THe REIGN or LAw 


Mucx illumination, and also much confusion, in regard 
to Religion and Ethics has resulted from recent develop- 
ments in Psychology. The confusion has resulted, always 
and necessarily, whenever it is not clearly realised that 
it is futile to discuss the subject of the relation of 
Psychology and Religion until and unless one has— 
provisionally at any rate—made up one’s mind whether 
or no the Power behind the Universe is conscious or 
unconscious, alive or dead. In other words, it is pure 
waste of time to ask the meaning of the psychological 
data in religious experience or belief unless one has 
first answered the question whether, apart from these 
data, the existence of God is a probable or an improbable 
hypothesis. 

If, on other grounds, we have decided that there 
is no God, then obviously the Psychology of Religion 
becomes nothing more or less than the study of the 
origin, the quaint variations, the mechanism and the 
effects, of the human delusion that a God or gods exist. 
If on the other hand we have, at any rate provisionally, 
decided that the Ultimate Reality is alive and conscious, 
then we may expect that a scientific study of the psycho- 
logical aspect of the reactions of man to the Infinite 

269 


270 REALITY CHAP. 


will be extremely fruitful of results. In particular, it 
should do much to provide criteria which will help us 
to distinguish the element of truth from that admixture 
of delusion which is only what we should expect to 
find in the religion, as in the scientific or the political, 
conceptions of the human mind in their early stages. 

For reasons such as those briefly summarised in the 
earlier chapters of this volume, I hold that the balance 
of probability—to put it at its lowest—is on the side 
of the hypothesis that Ultimate Reality is of the nature 
of Conscious Life. In that case the problem of the 
bearing on Religion of the New Psychology raises again 
the old question of the relation of the Divine activity 
to the reign of law, first clearly posed when Newton 
displayed the mechanism of the heavenly spheres, and 
raised in a still more acute form when Darwin formulated 
the Law of Evolution. 

The laws of Psychology, so far as they are ascer- 
tained or ascertainable, are laws of Nature; and, if we 
regard the laws of Astronomy and Biology as formule 
descriptive of the mechanism by and through which the 
Divine activity finds self-expression, it cannot be other- 
wise with the laws of Psychology. Also if there are 
laws which govern the working of the human mind, then 
we should expect that, if there be any apprehension of 
the Divine by the human mind, it will be in accordance 
with those laws. 

When Darwin published his Origin of Species there 
were many who saw in it the death-blow both to Religion 
and Morality. It seemed to put a blind mechanical 
abstraction called Evolution on the throne of God, and 
to substitute the Struggle for Existence for the Law of 
Love. In an earlier chapter I have shown the fallacy 
of this deduction. What Darwin had discovered was 


x RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 271 


neither the nature of life nor the goal of its endeavour, 
but the road by which it had travelled. And his dis- 
covery illuminates, not so much the character or the 
purpose of the Power behind the Universe, as the 
mechanism by and through which He (or It) works. 
It is so with the New Psychology. This is a branch of 
Science; it is not a metaphysic. For the student of 
Religion it will soon, I believe, be recognised as the 
most important of the sciences—for if salvation is of 
souls, a science that throws light on the mechanism 
of human thought and human conduct cannot but be 
of vital interest to practical religion. Again, those who 
wish to study the various conceptions which humanity 
has entertained as to the nature of God, or to estimate 
the practical value of different codes of morals, may 
find the facts which Psychology brings to light, and the’ 
laws which it can formulate, to be relatively more 
important than those given by any other science; but 
that is all. No more than Astronomy or Biology does 
Psychology in itself provide either a philosophy of the 
Universe or a criterion of moral values (p. 342 ff.). 
Primitive religion looks for evidence of Divine action 
mainly in the abnormal and the inexplicable, in the 
comet or the thunderbolt rather than in the sunrise or 
the growing blade—with the result that the narrow 
margin left for the recognition of any specifically Divine 
activity at all shrinks day by day with every advance 
of human knowledge. No small part of human progress 
has consisted in getting away from the conception of 
the Divine as essentially the irrational. The Greek 
philosophers achieved this along the line of the pure 
intellect; they saw the Universe as the expression of 
Reason. The Hebrew prophets did the same thing, but 
along another line; for them the idea of the ‘holy’— 


272 REALITY CHAP. 


originally the awe-inspiring quality in irrational taboo— 
was transmuted till it became the characteristic symbol 
of the ethically sublime. In our own time it is Science 
that is ever forcing men to complete the work which 
the Greek and the Hebrew began. Science is the great 
cleanser of human thinking; it makes impossible any 
religion but the highest. 

When, however, one speaks of recent psychology as 
an extension to the sphere of the human mind of the 
scientific conception of the reign of law, there are two 
limiting considerations which must be borne in mind. 

(1) Much attention has been given of late to an 
analysis of the conception of law as used by Science. 
It is no longer supposed that the great generalisations of 
Physics, Astronomy and Chemistry have the same kind 
of necessity as the deductions of pure Mathematics. 
The ‘Laws of Nature’ are no longer regarded as eternal 
principles necessarily inherent in the nature of Reality; 
they are rather man-made descriptions. A Law may 
perhaps be defined as a ‘formula of limited degree of 
complexity’, which describes in a conveniently summary 
way uniformities of sequence and coexistence that obser- 
vation has detected, and at the same time forms a 
coherent system with all other similar ‘formule’. Since 
these laws enable us to predict occurrences, we have a 
security that they have a real correspondence with the 
structure of Reality . But the recent supersession of the 
Newtonian Law of Gravitation—‘the most spectacu- 
lar’ demonstration of the reign of law—has advertised 
to the world at large, what was already known to 
thinkers, viz. that the universal validity of all the laws 
known to Science is limited by the fact that the observa- 


* See the interesting discussion by Mr. Bertrand Russell in a recent 
reprint of Lange’s History of Materialism, p. xiii ff. (Kegan Paul, 1925.) 


x RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 273 


tions on which they are based are, in the last resort, 
approximations. The margin of error is perpetually 
being reduced by improved observation, with the result 
that it 1s found sometimes that the law as previously 
stated holds good only up to a certain point, sometimes 
that a new law is required to describe the facts. Now 
Psychology is the youngest of the sciences; it follows 
that the laws which it has so far formulated are likely 
to be provisional to an extent that does not hold of the 
older sciences. 

(2) The second consideration, though theoretically of 
universal application, is one which in practice affects 
Psychology more than any other branch of Science. 
Only so far as facts are identical in character can they 
be regarded as instances of a general law. Law is 
based upon classification; but classification, as we have 
already seen (p. 83 ff.), is a method of handling a plu- 
rality of things by the simple device of ignoring their 
individuality. Where, as in Psychology, individuality is 
an important feature of the subject matter studied, this 
limitation of the scientific method of knowledge is at 
its maximum. It follows, therefore, that anything like 
a complete explanation of the working of the human 
mind in terms of law is from the nature of the case 
impossible. If this limitation is not constantly borne in 
mind, the application by Psychology of the scientific 
concept of law to the understanding of the human mind 
may lead rather to misunderstanding. One such mis- 
understanding is the widespread idea that the possibility 
of a successful application of the concept of law to the 
workings of the human mind entails the denial of Free- 
will. What, however, is meant by Freewill except the 
assertion that spontaneous individuality exists? Indi- 
viduality, we have seen (p. 88), can be perceived in the 


274 REALITY CHAP. 


concrete instance; but, since it eludes classification, it 
must also elude explanation in terms of law. ‘There is, 
therefore, always something in any human personality 
that cannot in this sense be ‘explained’. 

Since neither Psychology nor Religion can admit that 
any conscious human activity is outside its sphere, the 
points of contact between them are far too numerous 
to be dealt with in a single chapter. But the purpose 
of this book is not so much to solve particular prob- 
lems, as to determine the general principles involved in 
a proper correlation of Religion with Science. It will, 
therefore, suffice if I illustrate these principles by an 
examination of three propositions which belong to the 
commonplace of discussion on this subject: viz. that 
the idea of God is a ‘projection’, that prayer is a 
form of auto-suggestion, and that prayer for others 
works by telepathy. It will appear, if I mistake not, 
that in each of these propositions there is an element of 
truth and an element of error. The way will then be 
clear to outline briefly some considerations of a more 
positive character. 


PROJECTION AND THE IpEA oF Gop’ 


It is often said that belief in God is to be explained 
as a ‘projection’ upon the Universe of the child’s 
craving for a parent’s protection, or of its passionate 
yearning for affection, surviving in the adult in a 
‘repressed’ form; and that therefore Religion is a symp- 
tom that the person who exhibits it is suffering more 
or less acutely from a psycho-neurosis. 


1 A few paragraphs and some of the arguments in this subsection are 
adapted from a paper, treating the same subject at greater length, but 
with a slightly different orientation, read by me to the Seventh Inter- 
national Congress of Psychology (1923), and printed in their Proceed- 
ings. (Cambridge University Press, 1924.) In some points I have modi- 
fied views there expressed. 


x RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 275 


In support of this hypothesis evidence can be 
adduced from the lives of the Saints and the materials 
collected in books like William James’ famous Varieties 
of Religious Experience. Phenomena here abound which 
are among the recognised symptoms of psycho-neurosis, 
such as a ‘masochistic’ delight in suffering, a preoccupa- 
tion with inward states of feeling indicative of extreme 
‘introversion’, a type of straining egoism which sug- 
gests a ‘psychic over-compensation’ for an ‘inferiority 
complex’. 

Candidly, I cannot help feeling that many of these 
people would have been much the better for a course 
of treatment on psycho-therapeutic lines. But the 
result of such treatment, I feel sure, would have been, 
not to cure them of Religion, but to give their religion 
a much saner and more healthy turn. At this point, 
however, it is again of the first importance for the reader 
clearly to recognise the assumptions, whether conscious 
or subconscious, which he is making in regard to the 
Universe. If he starts with the assumption that there 
is no God, then the widespread delusion to the contrary 
will be one of the things which he may hope to explain 
by the study of these phenomena. But if on other 
grounds he is inclined to believe that God exists, he will 
be the more confirmed in that belief by the discovery 
that it is just those perverse, morbid and unworthy 
elements in human religion—that have made Religion 
seem the source of so much evil—which are most easily 
explicable as pathological in origin. 

At any rate, we must beware of ruling out of court 
every activity in which any person of the neurotic 
temper has excelled. If we begin doing that, we cannot 
stop short at Religion. There is a proverbial saying, 
Genius is akin to madness; and very many men of 


276 REALITY CHAP. 


genius have shown signs of being to some extent neurotic. 
If to admit that is to throw discredit on all their work, 
a clean sweep will be made, not only of most of the 
Poetry, Art and Architecture of the world, but also of 
much scientific discovery and mechanical invention. 
This association of genius with psycho-neurosis is, I 
believe, explicable. 

(1) Genius is Bey Te: the capacity to perceive 
things which escape the notice of the average man; 
that means that it involves a more than ordinary 
sensitiveness to impressions. A razor is more easily 
notched than an axe, and enhanced sensitiveness cannot 
but be accompanied by increased liability to injury. 
The potential genius, then, even if exposed to no more 
than the ordinary risks in early life, may easily sustain 
psychological injury from ‘traumata’ which hardly affect 
a more ordinary child, and may thus become to some 
extent psycho-neurotic. When, then, genius and psycho- 
neurosis co-exist, the genius is not the effect of the 
neurosis; they are parallel effects of a more than ordi- 
nary sensibility to impressions. 

(2) A psycho-neurosis is always an element of at 
least potential weakness; but, as Adler has shown,’ 
the effort of the psyche to over-compensate for a sub- 
conscious feeling of inferiority often leads the individual 
to concentrate exceptional energy upon some pursuit for 
which he has a natural aptitude. Given the requisite 
ability, this effort may lead to outstanding achievement 
in that particular field. This is the psychological basis 
for the element of truth in the definition of genius 
as ‘an infinite capacity for taking pains’. Plato long 
ago pointed out that perfect health is in practice often 
a bar to intellectual achievement. A vigorous healthy 


* The Neurotic Constitution, passim, E.T. (Moffat Yard and Kegan 
Paul, 1917.) 


mx RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 277 


young man is usually distracted by too many other 
interests; some physical disability, ‘the bridle of 
Theages’, is generally needed, he thought, to turn men 
to philosophy. Perhaps the same thing applies to 
perfect psychic health. 

The fact, then, that in the history of Religion, genius 
and neurosis are sometimes found together, is neither 
more nor less significant than is the same thing when 
it occurs in persons of artistic or scientific gifts. But 
in the case of Religion there have been, I suggest, other 
influences at work. First, the picture of Hell-fire vividly 
presented to an imaginative and hypersensitive child 
would in itself suffice to produce a psychological trauma. 
And so long as European thought was dominated by 
this conception, the religion of maturity would intensify 
the injury. Secondly, much of the evidence comes 
from the cloister; but the life of the cloister, especially 
in the Middle Ages,* was in some of its features admirably 
adapted to enhance neurotic tendencies already existing 
in the individual, and therefore to elicit in an exaggerated 
form the symptoms which are their normal expression. 
But this consideration is double-edged. The austerities 
endured, and the lives lived year after year by some 
of the saints, were enough to kill any ordinary person 
in six months. Somehow and somewhence these people 
must have secured some special enhancement of vitality; 
and this at least suggests the possibility that in Religion 
itself there is a health-creating power which may go 
some way to counteract a psycho-neurosis which has 
originated from some other cause. 


* But the sadistic cruelty, senseless treacheries, and sexual extrava- 
gances of so many persons of high position, and the wide prevalence of 
phenomena of dissociation like witchcraft and demon-possession, suggest 
the conclusion that neurosis was far more prevalent among sinners than 

saints. Indeed, in view of the violence and brutality of the times, the 
wonder is that any one could have escaped some serious psycholdgical 
trauma in early life. 


278 REALITY CHAP. 


Pursuing this suggestion, we soon come across evi- 
dence which points towards the conclusion that Religion, 
so far from being a pathological symptom, is psycho- 
logically considered a phenomenon characteristic, not of 
disease, but of health. 

(1) Perhaps the most interesting religious phenom- 
enon investigated by James and Starbuck is that of 
conversion. Now conversion, whatever we may think 
of its religious significance, is from the psychological 
standpoint the successful resolution of a state of inner 
conflict. It is a movement within the personahty from 
a condition of ‘dissociation’ in the direction of ‘inte- 
gration’. That is to say, conversion, from the psycho- 
logical aspect, is not a disease symptom but a movement 
towards restored health. To this view it will, perhaps, 
be objected that an inner conflict within the personality 
is sometimes brought to an end, not by cure, but by a 
complete identification of the self with some fantasy, and 
that the convert’s idea that he is a child of God may be 
a fantasy of this character. To this objection my reply 
would be that in ordinary medical practice such complete 
surrender of the self to a fantasy is usually what is called 
a ‘defensive neurosis’, that is, a device of the subcon- 
scious mind of the patient to enable him to escape finally 
from the difficulties and toils of real life. I frankly con- 
cede that this explanation may well apply to certain 
individuals who fly to the cloister to escape the tempta- 
tions and struggles of life in the world. But a theory 
which proposes to explain a phenomenon, must be capable 
of explaining it where it appears in its most pronounced 
form; and this theory fails to explain the phenomenon 
of Religion in some of its most striking cases, e.g. the 
Apostle Paul, St. Francis of Assisi, John Wesley, or 
General Booth. These men, as a result of conversion, 


x RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 279 


entered upon a life of action which they saw from the 
first must increase beyond measure any hardships and 
difficulties they would otherwise have had to meet. I 
am personally acquainted with religious leaders at the 
present day who display a power of initiative, organisa- 
tion, concentrated purpose, and prolonged mental and 
physical effort, equal if not superior to that of the great 
statesmen or commercial magnates of our time. The idea 
that such a man, for example,:as Dr. J. R. Mott, the 
founder of the World Student Christian Movement, is 
one who has fled to fantasy as a refuge from reality, will 
be greeted with derision by those who know him. 

(2) The functioning of an organism in a healthy 


state and its functioning when diseased are not the same * 


thing.. Where the body is concerned, this distinction 
is recognised as so vital that Physiology and Pathology 
are elassed as separate sciences. And, if we regard 
Psychology (as the new school does) as an extension of 
Biology, we are bound to recognise an analogous dis- 
tinction between Normal and Pathological Psychology. 
Physiology and Pathology are always throwing light on 
one another, and it must be the same with Normal and 
Abnormal Psychology; but their interaction will cease 
to be beneficial the moment it is forgotten that the 
functioning of an organism when diseased is not the same 
as its functioning when healthy, and that therefore con- 
clusions which may be suggested by the psychology of 
abnormal cases do not necessarily and without qualifica- 
tion hold good of normal persons. 

The importance of this consideration in regard to 
Religion is this. The great mass of healthy-minded per- 
sons do not often talk about, still less put in writing, their 
religious experiences. The people who write spiritual 

1T owe this point to a lecture by my friend, Dr. William Brown. 


280 REALITY CHAP. 


autobiographies—even when, like Newman, they are 
driven to it by external cireumstances—are usually intro- 
spective above the average; often they are of the type 
who are unhealthily interested in their inner state. But 
this means that the evidence which the psychologist has 
available for his studies has been, as it were, put through 
a sieve; the great mass of the material available for 
study comes either from the self-revelations of the more 
introverted, and even neurotic, of religious people, or 
else from the reports of the medical practitioner who 
is dealing with patients ex hypothesi abnormal. To con- 
centrate attention on the neurotic element which may 
be detected in these cases is to mistake the circumference 
for the centre. Normally, Religion is a force which 
makes for sanity and happiness, as well as for morality, 
in the life both of the individual and of the community. 

In this connection I may quote a remark made to 
me by a continental psychologist of world-fame to the 
effect that ‘as a result of his therapeutical practice he 
had come to the conclusion that for complete psycho- 
logical health mankind requires, either a religion, or 
some substitute for Religion which has not yet been dis- 
covered’. And he obviously regretted that he himself 
did not intellectually see his way clear to either alterna- 
tive. I may also refer to an illuminating suggestion 
worked out by my friend Dr. J. A. Hadfield.” That 
‘urge to completeness’, he argues, which on the physical 
side of the organism expresses itself in growth, in the 
healing of wounds and even (in the lower types of 
organism) in the renewal of lost limbs, has a psycho- 
logical counterpart. The ‘completeness’ towards which 
the psychological urge is reaching includes absence of 


1 Psychology and Morals, chs. viii.-xili (Methuen, 1923). Also in the 
Sere number of the Modern Churchman, September 1914 (Black- 
well). 


x RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 281 


conflict within the self and a felt harmony of the / 


individual both with his social environment and with 
the Universe at large. This harmony, as a matter of 
fact, can only be attained by the building up of an 
ethical personality in which the instincts are duly 
sublimated and subordinated to a dominant ideal. But 
in so far as the ‘urge to completeness’ demands harmony 
with the whole environment, i.e. with the Universe, it 
forms the psychological basis of Religion. It is the 
subjective need for which a true religion provides the 
objective satisfaction. On this theory Religion is seen 
to be eminently ‘natural’ to man; and the need for it 
—though in pathological subjects it may take a patho- 
logical form—is in itself an evidence of vital energy in 
the individual. The theory also points to there being 
a psychological verification of St. Augustine’s famous 
saying, ‘Thou didst make us for Thyself; and our 
heart is restless until it rests in Thee’. 

(3) If Religion originates in psycho-neurosis, we 
ought to be able to discover some kind of relation 
between the quality of a man’s religious conviction and 
the extent of his neurosis. The intensity of a religious, 
as of any other, conviction might, in itself, be explained 
in psycho-neurotic terms; but its quality is a different 
matter. Putting it In another way, fanaticism may well 
be a pathological symptom; insight is not. In almost 
every asylum there is some one who is quite convinced 
that he is the Messiah; so was Jesus Christ—but that 
is the end of the resemblance between them. 


This somewhat tedious controversy about religion 
and psycho-neurosis has led many to overlook the 
important element of truth in the statement that the 
idea of God is a ‘projection’. The Universe is a thing to 


282 REALITY CHAP. 


be lived in, as well as an object of scientific study. 
Hence, as I have already (p. 67) had occasion to insist, 
we cannot avoid an emotional reaction towards Reality 
as well as an intellectual. The important thing is to 
make sure that in both cases our reaction is the right 
one, that is, the one most appropriate to the actual 
character of Reality. To ascertain the intellectual 
reaction most appropriate is the business of Science and 
Philosophy; the securing of the appropriate emotional 
reaction is more particularly the concern of Religion. 
Between the intellectual and emotional reactions 
there is an analogy—which I think has been commonly 
overlooked. Understanding, in the scientific sense, 
depends on seeing a relation between a phenomenon 
newly observed and others previously observed. That 
is to say, intellectual understanding necessitates the 
constant reference of new facts to what I may call ‘intel- 
lectual complexes’ which are the result of previous 
experience. Now emotional understanding works in a not 
dissimilar way. In everyday life we all of us ‘sense’ 
hostility, friendliness and the like, in other persons by an 
instinctive reference to the emotional reactions which 
their presence excites; these reactions depend on “feeling- 
complexes’ born of past experience. In much the same 
way, I suggest our emotional reaction to Reality must be 
to a large extent determined by already existent ‘feeling- 
complexes’. Our psychic constitution is such that we 
normally react along the line of some channel worn, so 
to speak, by previous emotional experience. Now, if the 
Power behind things can, as I have argued, be properly 
conceived of as a Living God—of whom Christ is the 
portrait—then the only channel at all adequate for the 
right direction of the emotional reaction of man to God 
is that worn by the child’s experience of its parents. 


x RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 283 


And clearly, the better the parents the less inadequate 
the channel. 

Now where a child has sensible and good parents, its 
emotional reaction towards them is healthy; its psy- 
chological attitude towards them is then what is some- 
times technically expressed by the word ‘sentiment’ 
rather than ‘complex’... But grave faults in char- 
acter In one or both of the parents, or grave errors in 
their treatment of the child, frequently impart to the 
relation between parent and child a pathological char- 
acter; the child, in the technical phrase, grows up with a 
‘father-complex’ or (and) ‘a mother-complex’. Where 
this is the case, a neurotic element in his or her religion 
would seem to be almost inevitable. Where, however, 
the relation between the child and its parents has been 
thoroughly healthy, an emotional channel has been worn, 
a ‘sentiment’ has grown up, on the lines of which a 
sound and healthy emotional reaction towards God may 
be developed. When Christ told man to think of, and 
feel towards, God as ‘your heavenly Father’, He was in 
effect inviting them to ‘project’ this ‘father-sentiment’ 
upon the Universe; but it was the healthy ‘sentiment’ 
and not the pathological ‘complex’ that He meant. 

‘Our Father’;—among fighting races social ideals 
tend to an over-emphasis on strength and justice as the 
characteristic virtues of the male, on tenderness as the 
special virtue of the female. The ideal character must 
obviously be a harmony of all these virtues; and it is 
noteworthy that they are all found completely har- 
monised in the Christ. He, then, can suffice to be our 
portrait of the Divine Father. But in epochs when the 
Gospels could be read by few, but when the Last Judg- 


1On the distinction between a healthy ‘sentiment’ and a neurotic 
foe ces see J. A. Hadfield, Psychology and Morals, p.20 ff. (Methuen, 
1923. 


284 REALITY CHAP. 


ment, with Christ on the Judgment Throne terrifically 
pictured on stone or glass, was always before men’s eyes, 
it was perhaps impossible to preserve the element of 
tenderness in the Divine without adoring Mary also as 
the Queen of Heaven. 


AUTO-SUGGESTION AND PRAYER 


Through the fame of M. Coué, auto-suggestion has 
become a household word. But his theoretical account 
of the process, most fully expounded by his disciple 
Baudouin, differs more in balance of emphasis than 
in fundamental conception from the theory of hypnotic 
suggestion previously maintained by Prof. M‘Dougall * 
and other authorities. These hold that in hypnotic 
suggestion there is no magic influence, there is no subtle 
fluid passing from the physician to the patient, there 
is no imposition of superior will-power. What happens 
is this. The physician presents an idea to the patient’s 
mind at a time and under conditions when the patient 
will accept it without question and without reserve. 
The critical faculty, the resistive impulse, is temporally 
inhibited, with the result that the idea penetrates right 
down into the subconscious, and then begins to work. 
But the extent to which the idea ‘works’ depends, not 
on any magic gift in the physician, but on the receptivity 
of the patient, that is, on the degree to which the sugges- 
tion has been accepted. 

The Baudouin-Coué theory says that this means, in 


1 Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion, E.T. (Allen and Unwin, 1920.) 

2 Cf. Art. “Hypnotism” in Encyclopedia Britannica. 

$T use the word ‘sub-conscious’ rather than ‘unconscious’ or ‘fore- 
conscious’, as being less definitely associated with any particular theory 
of its nature. Some word is required to describe that part of the mind 
which happens for the time being to be outside the field of full con- 
sciousness. But no hard-and-fast line can be drawn. Most of what is 
in the subconscious can on occasion come into the field of consciousness, 
while anything in the conscious mind may be withdrawn from conscious- 
ness, 


x RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 285 


effect, that all suggestion is in the last resort auto- 
suggestion; for to say that a suggestion proceeding 
from the physician operates only as and when accepted 
by the patient is virtually to say that it operates as 
and when it becomes an auto-suggestion. Accordingly, 
in this view, all that is required is to teach the patient 
how to practise auto-suggestion, that is, how to present 
the right idea to his own mind under the conditions 
favourable to maximum receptivity. And it is claimed 
that, as a matter of experience, in cases where the patient 
has learnt the lesson, cures are effected more rapidly 
and more thoroughly by auto-suggestion than where the 
physician continues himself to employ hetero-suggestion. 

The value of auto-suggestion as a therapeutic method, 
or the possible dangers attending its indiscriminate use, 
are matters on which I am not competent to pronounce. 
I have mentioned M. Coué solely because through him 
public interest has been excited in phenomena the exist- 
ence of which was previously known only to specialists, 
and of which the real nature is still very imperfectly 
understood. But however obscure the nature of the 
phenomena, and however difficult the question of the 
right limits of the use of suggestion in medicine, it 
appears to be an established fact that human beings, 
though to a very variable degree, are ‘suggestible’. They 
are capable of accepting an idea in the depths of the 
subconscious, and an zdea once so accepted by the sub- 
conscious works—setting up, as it were, a kind of fer- 
mentation which may result, not merely in mental and 
nervous, but even in physical, changes. 

A striking experiment is recorded in The Lancet.’ In 
the presence of two other medical men, the experimenter 
told a hypnotised subject that he was about to be 


1 The Influence of Hypnotic Suggestion on Inflammatory Conditions, 
J. A, Hadfield, The Lancet, November 8, 1917. 


286 | REALITY CHAP. 


touched by a red-hot iron; one of the other doctors, 
as previously arranged, then put his finger gently on 
the subject’s arm. He cried out as if touched by a 
hot iron; the arm was bandaged and the bandage 
sealed. Next day the:bandage was removed, and on 
the spot touched was found a small blister of the same 
size and nature as one subsequently produced on the 
same subject by an actual touch of hot iron. It would 
seem that during the night the subconscious mind of 
the patient, convinced that an actual burn had been 
inflicted, had set in motion the complicated train of 
operations in blood-vessels and tissues which would 
have been the natural reaction of the organism to an 
actual physical burn. Persons as susceptible to sug- 
gestion as this one are extremely rare; but I have 
quoted the case in order to put side by side with it 
the still more remarkable, but well attested, story of 
St. Francis of Assisi, who, after a long period of medita- 
tion on the Passion of Our Lord culminating in a vision 
of a crucified cherub, was found to have imprinted on 
his hands and feet dark blister-like protrusions corre- 
sponding to the wounds of Christ. This experience of 
St. Francis and other incidents of a similar character 
seem to bear out the contention that auto-suggestion 
may be as powerful as, if not even more powerful than, 
hetero-suggestion; it also fits in with the theory that 
the principal agent in suggestion is the patient’s own 
acceptance of the idea suggested, not some mysterious 
influence proceeding from the physician. Indeed it 
would seem as if the main law governing the operation 
of auto-suggestion might be expressed in the formula: 
‘according to thy faith be it done unto thee’. This is 
a discovery which raises questions of a far-reaching 
character both for Philosophy and Religion: for if under 


x RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 287 


certain circumstances an idea—an entity purely mental— 
can directly initiate changes in the material sphere, we 
seem to catch a fleeting glimpse of mind in the act of 
creating. 

We may now proceed to ask, What is the exact 
relation between the method of auto-suggestion as 
recommended by M. Coué and the Christian practice 
of prayer? M. Baudouin lays stress on three empirical 
generalisations. 

(1) The power of an idea to work is largely dependent 
on its emotional associations. A mere intellectual con- 
cept, unless there is connected with it some feeling like 
hope, fear, attraction or repulsion, will produce little 
or no effect. The saints have always held that mere 
intellectual belief about God is of small value; the 
faith which makes prayer effective must be grounded 
in love. 

(2) Coué holds that a general suggestion, such as 
‘Day by day, in all respects, I am getting better and 
better,’ is more potent than particular suggestions which 
concentrate attention on the details of the patient’s 
ailment. Care is taken, however, to give him a pre- 
liminary suggestion, mentioning in detail the main forms 
and conditions of physical and mental health, so that 
the ‘general suggestion’ which follows is actually to 
the patient’s mind a kind of summarising formula full 
of concrete content, not a mere abstract phrase. 
Similarly in prayer the saints have deprecated too great 
concentration on points of detail, and recommended con- 
centration on comprehensive ideas such as the love of 
God or His saving power; but this will generally follow 
confession of particular sins and will include mention 
of particular needs. 

(3) A preliminary quiescence of the whole mind is 


288 REALITY CHAP. 


required, leading up to a concentration of attention on 
a single idea. But this concentration is effective in 
proportion as the patient becomes able to maintain it 
with a minimum of voluntary effort. Baudouin points 
out the resemblance between this state of mind and that 
arrived at by some of the Indian methods of Yoga. He 
does not point out its resemblance to a state of mind 
such as that recommended as a preliminary to devotion 
by some of the Christian mystics; but consider this by 
St. Peter of Alcantara. 


In meditation let the person rouse himself from things 
temporal, and let him collect himself within himself—that is 
to say, within the very centre of his soul, where lies impressed 
the very image of God. Here let him hearken to the voice of 
God as though speaking to him from on high, yet present in his 
soul, as though there were no other in the world save God and 
himself.* 


We notice that the points of contact between prayer 
and auto-suggestion are at their maximum in meditation 
and the ‘prayer of quiet’, that is, when prayer takes on 
its highest and most characteristically Christian form 
and has moved furthest from the primitive pagan con- 
ception of inducing the gods to do man’s will.’ 


Our theory of the relation of the Divine activity to 
the reign of law in Nature could hardly be submitted 
to a more crucial test. Clearly there is some relation 
between the laws of human Psychology such as those 
above described and that communion with God of which 
the saints speak—with its resultant enhancement of 


1 Quoted in A Litile Book of Life and Death, p. 128 (E. Waterhouse). 
(Methuen.) 

? On the fundamental antithesis between the Christian and Pagan 
conceptions of Prayer, cf. A. L. Lilley, Prayer in Christian Theology, 
pp. 1-10. (Student Christian Movement, 1925.) 


x RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 289 


mental and spiritual energy, and often of physical 
' endurance as well. Are we, then, to say that prayer 
is auto-suggestion—and nothing more? 

Once again I must point out that the answer we give 
to this question will depend entirely upon the answer 
we give to the prior question, Does God exist? If there 
is no God, then, of course, prayer is based upon illusion. 
But if God does exist, does it matter what name we give 
to the psychological mechanism by means of which the 
belief that He exists—and all that it involves—comes 
to be accepted below the merely surface consciousness 
in the inmost depths of my being? Suppose the belief 
to be true; then, once accepted into the subconscious, 
it will ‘work’ and will produce results in thought and 
action; and the results will surely be good. When to the 
psychological mechanism of such acceptance the name 
‘auto-suggestion’ 1s given, the question of the truth or 
falsehood of the idea accepted is simply left unraised. 
But he who prays has raised that question, and has 
answered that the idea zs true. Prayer is—or at least 
includes—the absolute surrender of the self, subconscious 
as well as conscious, to an idea—the idea of God as a 
present, personal, spiritual Being. But it is the truth 
of the idea, not the mechanism of its acceptance, that 
makes it to be prayer. 

There is a further consideration. Suppose God to be 
an infinite, omnipresent, conscious Being likely to wish 
for some kind of personal converse with His little chil- 
dren according to the capacity of their powers of recog- 
nition. If God is ‘the Beyond that is also Within’, it is 
only from within that we can know Him. How other- 
wise, then, should we expect Him to communicate with 
finite minds if not in accordance with the laws which 
govern the internal operations of those minds? A human 


290 REALITY CHAP. 


friend I can know by sight and touch, but from the 
nature of the case I can never see or touch the Infinite, 
the All-Pervading. What must here correspond to the 
external vision of my friend is my idea of God, the 
thought of Him that I entertain. And if God should be 
properly conceived as Creative Love, then it is the quali- 
tative aspect of my conception of Him that is most 
important; and that means that He can only communi- 
cate Himself to me if my ‘idea’ of Him is such as to 
educe an appropriate emotional response. Again, only 
if I surrender myself completely to this idea, so that it 
possesses my subconscious as well as my conscious mind, 
can I really appropriate it. For only so does it cease to 
be mere idea and become part of my actual life. Life, we 
have seen, cannot be intellectually understood; but it 
can be appreciated by life of a similar quality (p. 105). 
The Infinite Life, then, can reveal Himself to those 
within whom life similar in quality to His own has begun 
to be generated. This involves a submission of the mind 
to an idea of God; but it is an aspiring submission to a 
living idea. 

The methods of auto-suggestion, considered from a 
purely psychological point of view, are very like those 
advocated by the Mystics as preliminary to the ‘prayer 
of quiet’. But these are only methods. Between M. 
Coué and the Mystics there are two essential differences. 

(1) In the system of M. Coué the idea selected for 
concentration is spontaneously chosen, whether by the 
patient himself or his physician; and it is selected with- 
out any special regard to its truth or falsehood. In 
prayer the idea of God is not chosen but given, and it 
is accepted because it is felt to stand for ultimate truth. 

(2) Prayer is ascensio mentis ad deum, a flight 
upwards, an offering of the mind to that which is more 


x RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 291 


real than the self; auto-suggestion is a swoop down- 
wards, a submission of the mind to an idea which is a 
creature of its own.’ Prayer brings the inspiration which 
comes from contact with a personality greater than one’s 
own; auto-suggestion in the last resort is of the nature 
of ‘dope’. 

If Life is a principle of individuation (p. 90), the 
higher the life the richer will be its individuality. The 
ideal life, therefore, must not be thought of as an exact 
reproduction of a standard pattern; even the imitation 
of Christ will be bad, if conceived mechanically. 
Standardisation is for machinery, not for souls; and 
what would be perfection in a billiard ball (p. 130) is 
futility in a saint. This fact has a bearing, which I think 
has not been pointed out before, on the ideal and the 
methods of prayer. Desires vary with the individual; 
reason, so far as it functions correctly, is the same for 
all men. Character is individualised life, considered 
from the standpoint of its quality; but both the test 
and expression of the quality of a personality are to be 
seen in its dominant desires. Now no desire is ever 
quite the same after it has been offered up before God 
in prayer; a desire which has found expression in 
prayer is inevitably purified and elevated. Prayer, _ 
therefore, is the training-ground for character; we make 
it dificult for God to purify our desires unless we submit — 
them to Him. But to climb a ladder we must begin 
at the bottom rung; and we must pray for the things 
of which we really feel our need, as well as for the things 
which we think, or know, we ought to want—saying 


1Tt may be that he who prays has achieved an idea of God as a 
result of long thought and inquiry, which is slightly different from the 
idea entertained by those around him, and is, in that sense, his own 
idea. But even so, he holds it, not because it is Ais idea, but because 
he is convinced that it is the true idea. 


292 REALITY CHAP. 


not only ‘Thy will be done’, but also, ‘give us this day 
our daily bread’. Morality, say the psychologists 
(cf. Appendix IT.), is best achieved, not by crushing, but 
by ‘sublimating’ natural instincts. Just so, if God’s aim 
is to develop individuality, rather than to lop it down 
to a standard pattern, our actual desires are the material 
He needs to work upon. ~ 

This last consideration is obviously one of the first 
importance in regard to the much-discussed question of 
the petitionary element in prayer. But to work that 
point out here would entail too long a digression. I 
feel, however, impelled to utter a misgiving. There is, — 
I suspect, something seriously at fault in much of the 
traditional teaching and practice in regard to methods 
of devotion. Only under exceptional circumstances 
can the human mind remain for any long time on the 
mountain-tops of aspiration, vision or endeavour. A 
danger lies here. Prayer too long continued, especially 
if mechanical repetitions and the drill of a devotional 
system be invoked to sustain it, may easily and insensibly 
slip down to the level of mere auto-suggestion. It may 
even become a ‘pious habit’ of mental vacuity which 
may blunt the edge of understanding, quench initiative, 
dull the moral sense. That hypothesis, at least, would 
explain why it has so often happened that those who 
have been the first to stone the prophets have been 
among the most devout. It would explain, too, the 
intellectual and moral sterility of so many of the best- 
intentioned supporters of organised religion. True 
prayer must be that which succeeds in being (what all 
prayer aspires to be) a realised contact with Creative 
Spirit—the Spirit that makes all things new. If so, the 
test in one’s own life whether prayer is really prayer, or 
merely pious auto-suggestion, will be the extent to which 


x RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 293 


it inspires to bold and constructive action and to moral 
and intellectual initiative. 


TELEPATHY AND INTERCESSION * 

Man is an animal—capable, so Christ taught, of 
becoming a son of God. Man is a herd animal; and 
as this animal—growing in that love of God and that 
love of man which naturally expresses itself in prayer 
and active service—comes nearer to being a son of God, 
the herd is not left behind; it is slowly transformed into 
a consciously God-indwelt society, it becomes the King- 
dom of God on earth. Prayer, in its mechanism, may 
be likened to auto-suggestion, but in its essence it is a 
right orientation of the soul towards God. Conceive God 
as our Heavenly Father, and it is unnatural not to lay 
before Him our own hopes and needs, our interests or 
our fears. Petitionary prayer, then, is the expression of 
a sound instinct so long as we regard it, not as a means 
of extorting something from a grudging Deity, but as 
the spontaneous expression to our Father of wants which 
we deeply feel, and which it would be hypocrisy to pre- 
tend that we did not. These we submit to God, not 
because we distrust His goodness or desire to bend His 
will to ours, but because He is our friend. Similarly it 
would be unnatural not to submit to God the needs of 
others, and our hopes and fears on their behalf. If our 
own soul’s life is developing in the right direction, we 
know that we shall find ourselves growing in the capacity 
of loving our neighbour as ourselves. If, then, we do not 
find ourselves desiring to pray for others—in the same 
sense and in the same way as we pray for ourselves—that 

1 This subsection is a rewriting of part of the paper, “Creative 


eke published in the Conference number of The Modern Church- 
man, : 


294 REALITY CHAP. 


surely is a symptom that we are not travelling in the 
right. direction. 

But, we go on to ask, Does intercessory prayer really 
benefit the persons prayed for? Is anything actually 
effected by it? 

That prayer for others has, as a matter of fact, been 
followed in point of time by benefit to the persons prayed 
for, is a conclusion for which can be adduced a large 
amount of weighty testimony. But that the prayer is the 
cause of the benefit, that in these cases post hoc is equiv- 
alent to propter hoc, is a matter not easy to establish 
on evidence which is, scientifically speaking, adequate; 
especially as it is not difficult to produce negative 
instances of individuals who have been prayed for fer- 
vently by their well-wishers without any obvious benefit 
resulting. Nevertheless, the testimony of the saints— 
using the term ‘saint’ to include that great multitude of 
the uncanonised whose real goodness based on common 
sense gives their opinion no less weight than that of some 
among those officially canonised—cannot be ignored; 
and I will venture to assume that there is evidence that 
intercessory prayer has—at any rate in some cases and 
under some conditions—brought benefit to persons on 
whose behalf it was offered. On that assumption, I 
ask the question, If so, how and why? 

To this question I do not profess to have any answer 
which I should care to put forward as a considered 
philosophy of the subject. But I will outline, for what 
it may be worth, the hypothesis—or perhaps instead of 
‘hypothesis’ I should rather say the ‘imaginative picture’ 
—which at the moment presents itself as plausible to 
my own mind. 

(1) I cannot help thinking that each one of us is a 
centre of a kind of psychic radio-activity, which may 
be either baneful or beneficial to others.- That such 


x RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 295 


influence operates upon persons actually present for the 
time being is a matter of everyday experience. There 
are people whose mere presence in a room promotes 
cheerfulness; there are others who are a dead weight 
of depression; while others have the baleful gift of 
producing an atmosphere of nervous. excitability and 
tension. Again, the difference between the effect upon 
an audience of one actor or another playing the same 
part, or of two different singers. giving the same song, 
is not to be accounted for merely by superiority in 
technique or physical gifts.’ 

(2) There is a good deal of evidence that com- 
munication between one mind and another is possible 
without visible or audible means, and even over a 
considerable distance of space. To this phenomenon— 
call it ‘influence’, if ‘communication’ seems too definite 
a word—the name ‘telepathy’ has been given. Some 
of my scientific friends, I candidly admit, tell me that 
they are not quite convinced that telepathy has yet been 
proved. Nevertheless, with all due respect to their judg- 
ment, I do regard it as proved, for this reason. Much of 
the evidence submitted to establish the possibility of 
communication with departed spirits is of such nature 
that, as it seems to me, one is forced to choose between 
one of two hypotheses—either communication is pos- 
sible with the spirits of the departed, or there is such a 
thing as telepathic communication between living minds. 
Since, then, there is very respectable’ evidence for 
telepathic communication between the living, quite apart 
from that which would also fit in with the spiritualist 
hypothesis, the existence of evidence explicable on either 
view seems to me to weight the balance in favour of the 


1The most remarkable example of this power of creating ‘atmos- 
phere’ (in this case, one of peace) among persons I have met is Sadhu 
Sundar Singh—and I connect this with the fact that he spends so much 
of his life in prayer. 


296 REALITY CHAP. 


hypothesis of telepathy. Having, however, said this, I 
would hasten to add that the word ‘telepathy’ explains 
nothing; it is merely a convenient name for a phenom- 
enon which has so far eluded scientific analysis. But the 
name is aS convenient as any other, so long as we do not 
allow ourselves to be deluded into supposing that the 
naming of a phenomenon is equivalent to its explanation. 


Are we then to conclude that prayer for others is a 
form of telepathy? If by that is meant an attempt to 
exercise upon absent persons a kind of hypnotism 
intended to do them spiritual or other good, the answer 
I am inclined to give is, No. I cannot accept a view 
which would make prayer a form of long-range persuasion 
practised by invisible means. There is such a method 
of attempting influence, which is often called ‘absent 
treatment’; and there is a certain amount of evidence 
that some people can and do produce effects upon 
others in this way. Whether the evidence will bear 
scientific examination or not, I do not know; but, even 
if that were granted, a process of this kind, however 
beneficial, could not properly be called prayer—any more 
than giving a hungry person a meal could be called 
‘praying for them’, though, under certain circumstances, 
it might be the more Christian thing to do. The 
essence of prayer is that it is addressed to God; and 
intercession is prayer which expresses a desire that He 
may do something for the other person, or inspire them 
to do something for themselves. When I pray to God 
for some one, I am not regarding God as a kind of 
telephonic exchange for effecting communication between 
my mind and that of my friend. 

If prayer were thought of merely as a telepathic 
process it would cease to be prayer (though it might 


x RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 297 


still be quite a good thing). Nevertheless our principle 
that God works in and through the laws of Psychology 
suggests the hypothesis that the kind of psychic rapport 
between individuals of which telepathic phenomena are 
an evidence, may be a means by which God, through 
us, may effect His own good purposes. If God uses the 
medical skill of a doctor to preserve a life which other- 
wise would be lost, if he uses the charitable disposition 
of a millionaire to save refugees from starvation, if He 
uses the persuasiveness of a preacher to turn sinners to 
repentance, there is no reason why He should not use 
the ‘psychic radio-activity’ (supposing such a thing 
exists) of any individual to produce a change of heart 
in an erring friend, or the hope which will stimulate 
vitality in a sick one. 

The difficulty of clear thinking on this question is 
that the nature of the human mind is such that we 
inevitably tend to think of God as a kind of super- 
intelligent benevolent ‘third party’, wholly external both 
to me and to him for whom I pray. But God is not a 
‘third party’; He is not wholly outside any existent 
thing; in Him all of us ‘live and move and have our 
being’. The exact extent to which the individual soul 
is a part of, or is separate from, the Infinite Spirit, is 
a matter on which philosophers have said much, and will 
say more. My own belief is that this is a region 
where, from the nature of the human intellect, concep- 
tual thinking can no longer trust its methods, and 
that it is better, frankly resorting to thinking in pic- 
tures, to frame a myth. And my myth is this. Suppose 
I pray for my friend John, lying on a sick bed, say, in 
Birmingham, what happens? First of all, if I am pray- 
ing as a Christian should, I start with the realisation 
that John is far dearer to God than he is to me, and 


298 REALITY CHAP. 


that God knows the exact needs of John in a way I 
could not do, even if I was actually standing at his bed- 
side. Suppose I was standing at the bedside, I might 
by some small service, by suggesting a cheerful thought, 
or by the sympathy and encouragement of silent 
presence, very materially modify the mental attitude, the 
hope and courage, of my friend. By so doing I might 
turn the scale in the battle which is going on between 
the forces of disease on the one side and the vital prin- 
ciple, backed by the doctor’s and nurses’ skill, on the 
other. Is it not possible that an influence coming from 
me at a distance might have similar results? That, you 
will say, is mere telepathy. So it is: but, given that 
the me from whom that telepathic influence is flashed 
is, not just my ordinary self, but myself in spiritual 
communion with the Divine, then the situation is 
changed. The kind of influence flashed will be of an 
entirely different kind and quality to that which would 
be exercised if I was merely, ‘off my own bat’ so to 
speak, trying a little bit of long-distance hypnotism— 
and that on a person of whose state of mind at that 
actual moment I am necessarily unaware, and whose 
real needs, whether medical or moral, I might gravely 
misapprehend even were I on the spot. Prayer for others 
should, I think, be largely, to use an old phrase, the 
effort to ‘hold them before God’; leaving it to Him to 
give them the thing they really need; but in spiritual 
concentration putting our personality, with all its facul- 
ties, known or unknown, explained or unexplained, at 
His service—if haply, on this particular occasion and 
in this particular case, there may be anything in us 
which He will use. 

That is my myth. But whatever may be thought 
of it, we are at least on safe ground if we say that 


tm RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 299 


prayer for others is a natural and inevitable expression 
of the fact that man is a social animal, who as he 
becomes more religious becomes not less but more social. 
As man advances in religious appreciation he advances 
in the love of man as well as in the love of God; and, 
as he grows in the realisation of sonship towards God, 
he grows in the realisation of his brotherhood to man. 
And it may be that the quality of prayer which is the 
expression of this growth makes us one with the Eternal 
Spirit in a way which enables our spirits also to transcend 
for the time being the barriers which mere space can 
normally erect between us and those we love. We and 
they alike ‘live and move and have our being’ in Him; 
the prayer which is an intensely conscious realisation 
of this may well have creative or curative power. 


VISION AND PowER 

That which is unseen can only be apprehended as 
idea—whether that be an abstract concept or a symbolic 
picture. If the Great Unseen is such that it is best 
spoken of, not as Hu, but It, then the truest idea we can 
have of Ir will be some purely intellectual concept with 
little emotional content. In that case, by the laws of 
suggestion, it will not be the kind of idea which is likely, 
penetrating into the depths of the subconscious, to bring 
forth much fruit. But if, as the result of previous 
investigation, we have decided that the IT is more 
appropriately spoken of as Hz, the case is altered. My 
idea of a living God cannot be a merely intellectual con- 
cept. According as I envisage His nature and His 
purpose, there will predominantly be connected with my 
idea of Him feelings either of terror, shrinking and 
abasement, or of joyful adoration, love and trust. But 
once accept into my inmost self an idea fraught with 


300 REALITY CHAP, 


emotion of either of these types, then by the funda- 
mental laws of the nature of mind that idea must 
begin to work. And it will work like a ‘general 
suggestion’, a formula summarising many particulars. 
It cannot but produce marked results—upon my whole 
outlook upon men and things, my temperament, my 
character, my nervous system, and, lastly, upon my 
physical well-being. And those results will be directly 
proportionate to the extent to which it has penetrated 
my whole self. According to my faith it will be done 
unto me. 

But what will be done unto me? Will those results 
be on the whole beneficent, or the contrary? Neces- 
sarily, by the laws of mind, it follows that those results 
will be evil or good according as the emotions which I 
associate with the idea of God incline to be those of 
terror and shrinking, or those of love and trust. Merely 
from the standpoint of its psychological mechanism, 
prayer is akin to ‘auto-suggestion’—that word being 
used as the technical psychological description of a self- 
disposal of the mind which results in a man’s completely 
‘taking in’ an idea (presented under certain conditions) 
in such a way that the idea penetrates the subconscious 
as well as the conscious mind. If the idea is true, 
wholesome and sufficiently important, such self-disposal 
will be wholly beneficial; but if otherwise, it will be 
disastrous. Hverything, therefore, depends on how we 
envisage the God to whom we pray. 

This is a conclusion of tremendous import. The old 
Hebrew prophets were right in their denunciations of 
idolatry. For the essence of idolatry lies, not in the set- 
ting up of some graven image in a temple, but in the 
setting up before the mind’s eye of any idea of God 
which is lower than the highest that our capacities or 


i RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 301 


those of our age can grasp; and idolatry is wrong, not 
because it is an affront to God, but because it is an injury 
to man. We are always hearing of the failure of official 
Christianity. That failure, I would urge, is in the main 
due to the fact- that the Churches have never dared 
openly to break the idols of the past, and publicly dis- 
card certain ideas of God, and of His ways with man, 
which are no longer the highest that men can conceive, 
which indeed sometimes make God out to be in goodness 
and in good-sense inferior to man.* 

I cannot but think that some even of the greatest 
of the mystics have been mistaken in supposing the 
highest stage of the religious life to be that in which the 
soul ‘sinks into the vast darkness of the Godhead’. I 
would urge rather that the highest type of prayer is 
man’s response to the ‘message’ (I John i. 5) that ‘God 
is light; and in him is no darkness at all’. Prayer rises 
to its highest, not by emptying the idea of God of all con- 
tent, but by filling it so far as possible with the right 
content. And we do this best if, without forgetting the 
God revealed in Nature in its sublimity and beauty, we 
chiefly think of Him in terms of Christ. ‘Seeing it is God 
that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined 
in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the 
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’. 

Let us suppose a man to think of God in terms of 
Christ, to be convinced, that is, that God is sublimely 
sensible, absolutely reliable, wholly loving; suppose 
further that, through something like the ‘prayer of 

1‘T recall a mot by Clutton-Brock. A Jesuit theologian, he was told, 
had explained that it was possible that infants dying unbaptized would 
enjoy after this life a felicity exceeding anything we can even imagine 
in this world; yet since they must suffer eternal deprivation of the 
Beatific Vision they will be technically in Hell. ‘That,’ said Clutton- 


Brock, ‘is an attempt to save the morality of God at the expense of His 
common sense’. 


302 REALITY CHAP. 


quiet’—concentrated but not, I think, too long continued 
—he were to allow that vision, that idea, to ‘work’ in his 
subconscious mind. Should we not expect such a one 
to achieve enhancement of vitality, conquest of tempta- 
tion, superiority to pain, triumph over circumstance? 
For him vision would be translated into power. And 
suppose, not one man, but a great company were to see 
that vision and appropriate it, then, in their united 
power, would not the Kingdom of God be at hand? 

‘Tf ye have faith . . . ye shall say unto this moun- 
tain be thou removed. . . .’ No word of the Master 
has seemed so wildly visionary as this, none has so often 
been toned down and explained away. But, by ‘faith’ 
Christ meant an absolute inward appropriation of the 
Vision of God—of God conceived and felt as He knew 
Him. And He was not addressing a single individual, 
but a brotherhood which he meant to be the core of the 
faithful ‘remnant’ of a nation conscious of a world- 
mission. It was not a poet’s dream, it was scientific fact, 
tiat His Vision of God, if accepted and retained for a 
generation unadulterated and unimpaired by a world- 
wide brotherhood of men, would have generated a power 
before which all obstacles would have gone down. What 
Christ said was sober fact then, and it is sober fact to-day. 

The Vision of God which He saw is, I have argued, 
true. God is there, wishing to speak to us, urgent to 
recreate us. What Psychology has done is to unveil 
some little part of the mechanism through which God 
speaks and acts, provided that we do our part. Prophets 
and saints all testify that God does work, that Vision 
appropriated in prayer does issue forth in Power. These 
great souls, inheriting the rule-of-thumb experience of 
generations—interpreted by their own individual genius 
and resolution—did actually, though without clear 





x RELIGION AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 303 


understanding of its nature, make use of the appropriate 
- psychological mechanism. But surely the dawning light 
of scientific understanding should make it possible in 
the future for men of quite ordinary capacity to accom- 
plish practical results on a larger scale than was possible 
to them. So far from discrediting prayer, Psychology 
has shown its rationality; and future discovery will 
doubtless help us better to distinguish between the 
methods which, so far as the human instrument is con- 
cerned, are likely to be the more or the less effective. 
Tremendous are the problems which confront our age; 
civilisation, think some, is tottering. But with new 
knowledge comes new hope; and it may be given to 
our age to see fulfilment in a new way of the ancient 
promise that he that believeth shall do ‘greater works 
than these’. 


‘I would fain be to the Eternal Goodness what his 
own hand is to a man’.. But no man can be a partner 
in the creative work of God who forgets that life is a 
battle in which victory is always at the cost of effort, 
and generally of wounds as well. 

There is a notable piece of psychological analysis in 
Mr. Graham Wallas’ famous Human Nature in Politics, 
in which he shows the necessity of some picture, name or 
other symbol on which thought and emotion can be so 
focussed that it stands as a dynamic representation of 
the meaning and the value of a complex reality like a 
country or a cause. 


When a man dies for his country, what does he die for? 
The reader in his chair thinks of the size and climate, the 
history and population of some region in the atlas, and explains 
the action of the patriot by his relation to all these things. But 


1 Theologia Germanica, p. 32. (Macmillan, 1901.) 


304 REALITY CHAP. IX 


what seems to happen in the crisis of battle is not the logical 
building up or analysing of the idea of one’s country, but an 
automatic selection by the mind of some thing of sense accom- 
panied by an equally automatic emotion of affection... . 
What comes to him in the final charge? Perhaps the row 
of pollard elms behind his birthplace. More likely some per- 
sonification of his country, some expedient of custom or 
imagination for enabling an ‘entity which one can love to 
stand out from the unrealised welter of experience. If he 
is an Italian it may be the name, the musical syllables, of 
Italia. If he is a Frenchman, it may be the marble figure of 
France with her broken sword, as he saw it in the market- 
square of his native town, or the maddening pulse of the 
‘Marseillaise’. Romans have died for the bronze eagle on a 
wreathed staff, Englishmen for a flag, Scotchmen for the sound 
of the pipes.* 


Religion, too, must concentrate its meaning in some 
dynamic symbol capable, in times of weariness and 
crisis, of lifting man above his normal self, and sustain- 
ing him through doubt and through despair with a clear 
sense of aim and courage superhuman. If the Kingdom 
of God is to be realised on earth, its soldiers need a 
rallying standard—and that with inspiration not limited 
by time or place. For this nation or for that, in one age 
or in another, an eagle, a flag or a battle-song has had 
the magic to make men more than men; ask we a stand- 
ard potent for every race and in every age? That 
standard is the Cross of Jesus; its legend, Follow me. 


* Human Nature in Politics, p. 72f. (Constable, 1908.) 


x 


IMMORTALITY 


IMMORTALITY 
SYNOPSIS 


Face to face with death, all our argument ‘about it and about’ seems 
curiously beside the point. 

The mode of any future life we can only think of in metaphor—and 
no metaphor is likely to suggest a picture of that life even approximately 
correct. Yet the alternative—extinction or continued life—is a real one; 
and, however difficult it may be to make a decision in regard to it, such 
decision concerns a matter of fact. 

The fact is important, not merely on account of human shrinking 
from an unknown future or the bitterness of bereavement, but mainly 
for its bearing on the eternal reality of ideal values. 

The traditional mythology of the future life is obsolete; but unless 
the whole argument of this book is fallacious, life is of the enduring 
substance of Reality. 

The life of the future to be conceived in terms of quality not locality, 
as a continuation in enhanced form of the highest life known on earth. 

The fact that life is essentially a principle of individuation favours 
the hypothesis that life endures, not merely in its universal, but also in 
its individual, manifestation. 

Criticism of the idea that there is no loss of value if the individual 
perishes, so long as the Infinite Life goes on. It is not a question of 
man’s desire for immortality; God—if He be really our Father, indeed 
unless He is actually morally inferior to man—cannot permit His chil- 
dren to perish. 

A decision as to the moral quality of ultimate Reality is involved. 
Therefore the question must be considered from the standpoint of God’s 
greatness, not from that of human littleness or doubt. 


306 


xX 
IMMORTALITY * 


To stand looking at a human frame from which life has 
just departed is to feel the futility of those elaborate 
arguments about the Immortality of the Soul—for and 
against it—in which most of us some time or other have 
taken part. Face to face with the fact of death, they 
seem quite curiously beside the point. We are up 
against an Unknown which baffles our accustomed 
method of analysis and exploration. We have thought, 
we have listened, and we have talked about this thing— 
but when the thing itself is before our eyes, if anything 
at all of this comes back to us, it will be one or other of 
the old familiar metaphors. 

According to our mood, or even, it may be, according 
to the expression on the features of the dead, these 
rise before our fancy. That loving, living, enchanting 
something that has gone, what is its connection with 
this other cold, still, decaying mass that is left behind? 
Is it the melody of the lute, gone for ever when the 
strings are broken? Or are we gazing on the empty 
cover of a chrysalis, whose tenant, transformed into some 
new and glorious mode, is enjoying even now, unseen 
by us, ‘a larger ether, a sublimer air’? Was that 
lively something, which seems to have departed, nothing 
but the visible manifestation of some material process 
which has now ceased—the flame of a candle that has 

1 Reprinted by permission (with some amplification) from the Nine- 


teenth Century and After. 
307 


308 REALITY CHAF: 


been blown out? Or has our brother ‘fallen asleep’— 
a sleep the more refreshing because so deep—to wake 
again to welcoming faces of the dear ones who have gone 
before, in that far country where the great and good of 
all the ages dwell in eternal bliss? 

Metaphors these—guesses, if you like—but the 
alternatives which they present to the mind are real. 
No mental picture we can frame of any life beyond the 
present is likely to be even approximately a correct 
image of the reality. But, under whatever metaphor 
or symbol we may envisage it, the alternative between 
extinction and continued existence is one which belongs 
to the realm of fact. The fact, like many other matters 
of fact, may be difficult to determine, but fact there must 
be. Suppose a man brought up for trial for murder. 
The evidence of the witnesses may be conflicting; the 
arguments of the opposing counsel may seem of nearly 
equal weight; but the man either did or did not commit 
the crime. Fact is none the less fact because it 
happens to be hard to ascertain. And, difficult as 


it may be to strike the balance of argument on either 


side, the continuance or the reverse of life beyond 
the grave is in the last resort not a matter of opinion, 
but of fact. 

And it is a fact the knowledge of which is of more 
practical importance to man than any other one thing. 


And ah, to know not, while with friends I sit, 
And while the purple joy is passed about, 
Whether ’tis ampler day divinelier lit 
Or homeless night without; 


And whether, stepping forth, my soul shall see 
New prospects, or fall sheer—a blinded thing! 
There is, O grave, thy hourly victory, 
And there, O death, thy sting. 


: 
q 
: 
[ 
‘ 
. 
, 





x IMMORTALITY 309 


But it is not merely the apprehensicn of an unknown 
future voiced in these well-known lines; it is not even— 
though that counts for much more—the bitterness of 
bereavement and the passionate desire for reunion with 
our beloved that makes the question of a future life the 
one all-important fact. It is the feeling that if this life 
is really all, then the best and noblest things in life are 
not really what they seem—they, too, become matters 
of opinion. Most of us instinctively approve a decent, 
honourable way of life. Most of us also prefer clean 
linen to dirty. But, when clean linen cannot con- 
veniently be got, some will put themselves about a good 
deal, others not so much, to overcome the difficulty. 
This, we allow, is a matter of individual taste. But is 
our preference for high and honourable living no more 
than that? Is the rightness of the right, the nobility 
of heroic effort, just a thing like clean linen, about which 
some people are perhaps a shade too faddy, others a 
good deal too slack? Is that perfect harmony of mutual 
love, sympathy and help, which is sometimes realised 
between human souls, to be valued merely as a source 
of pleasure more invigorating than champagne, and as 
a means of comfort and convenience more comprehensive 
and more soothing than a good arm-chair? Or are we 
to say that duty, heroism, love, are windows through 
which from time to time we glimpse something of eternal 
value—something which is not a matter of opinion, but 
is deeply rooted in the ultimate Reality, something 
which makes worth while the sacrifice, the toil and moil, 
the constant stumbling and the never-ending struggle 
to arise? 

This question is quite fundamental; but it is not 
one of those which can be settled by argument. If 
anyone chooses to say that the answer we give to it is 


310 REALITY CHAP. 


a ‘matter of taste’, all that can be done in reply is to 
insist that the taste involved is different in kind 
from that which decides on the question of clean linen 
or between the comparative merits of two French dishes. 
In the language of everyday life the distinction is 
expressed by saying that it is a matter, not of taste, 
but of character. In argument it is difficult to put it 
that way without either seeming pharisaical or being 
guilty of discourtesy. Hence it is a point on which 
argument is best avoided; but every student of human 
nature knows that the fundamental difference of quality 
between people consists, not so much in what they do— 
that is largely a matter of environment and circum- 
stance—but in whether, at the bottom of their hearts, 
they consider things like honour, love and duty to be 
a ‘matter of taste’ or something more. But—and here 
is the vital consideration—is it easy, either to account 
for this difference of outlook or to justify the nobler 
choice, if this life is all? 

No doubt at the present day many of those whose 
whole heart, mind and life goes out to an emphatic. 
affirmation of the worthwhileness and the supremacy 
of these higher things, question or deny a future life. 
But it will, I think, be found with most of these that 
their very denial is a result of the passionate character 
of their idealism—a false deduction, I would submit, 
from premises that are high and true. 

To some the affirmation of a future life means an 
association with the nobler choice of the idea of reward 
and punishment; and this seems to detract from its 
moral value. Antigone defying the tyrant with no hope 
of immortality, is surely, they say, a nobler figure than 
St. Perpetua doing the same thing, convinced that she 
is meriting thereby eternal bliss. This may be con- 





x IMMORTALITY 311 


ceded; but the question, as it seems to me, is not how 
best to form a kind of ‘class list’ of heroic spirits, but 
how we are to ‘make sense’ of a Universe capable of pro- 
ducing such, and then letting them perish out of existence 
for evermore. 

There are others who, having been brought up in a 
more or less literal acceptance of the traditional ideas 
of heaven and hell, scornfully reject them, as not only 
trivial but immoral. 

The mind of man [wrote Clutton Brock] is at the present 
day suffering from a nervous shock caused by his past failures 
to conceive of a future state. A burnt child dreads the fire; 
and the mind of man has been burnt by the fires of his own 
imagined Hell. So he flinches from the peril of any more 
concelving. 

That is the real difficulty. The old mythology of a 
future state is grotesquely unconvincing; and men 
hesitate to frame a new one. Unless the whole argument 
of this book is off the track, life is of the enduring sub- 
stance of Reality. Matter is, as it were, a precipitate 
of life. Life is the artist; matter is the clay. But life 
is essentially that which eludes the method of scientific 
knowledge; its nature can only be expressed by the 
methods of art—by metaphor or myth. It is, then, a 
myth that we lack, a way of conceiving of life in the 
Beyond; for believing that life endures, we have good 
grounds. 

I have attempted elsewhere * to frame a new ‘myth’, 
or, perhaps I should say, to present a mental picture 
congruous with modern thought of the mode and char- 
acter of life in the Beyond. I do not propose to repro- 
duce this here; I would, however, recall that close con- 
nexion between the idea of quality and that of life which 


1In two essays in Immortality. (Macmillan, 1917.) 


312 REALITY CHAP. 


has so often recurred in the foregoing chapters. It may 
well be that place, as well as time, has a meaning in the 
life of the Beyond; nevertheless the essential feature 
in any ‘myth’ which aspires to be a valid representation 
of a future life, must be the conceiving of that life in 
terms of quality rather than of locality. This idea is 
already found, implicitly, in the Fourth Gospel. At any 
rate its author is at pains to criticise the picture-thinking 
of contemporary religion in regard to its conception of 
the Judgment as a Great Assize; again he always speaks 
of Eternal Life as something which at least in part can 
be enjoyed here and now. Clearly he thinks of the 
Beyond in terms, not of place (or not mainly of place), 
but of quality of life. I have argued above that life of 
the quality manifested in the soul of Christ, that is, the 
highest life we know, is for us in this world a mirror of 
the creative life of God; if so, all human life as it 
approximates to that same quality must be a mirror of 
the life of Heaven. What we know here as love, joy, 
peace, constructive work, the vision of beauty—humour, 
too, I would add—are the pattern by which to frame our 
conception of that other richer life. But if the highest 
life we know on earth is no mere shadow, but is of the 
very substance of that which is to come, yet it is still 
only an earnest and a foretaste. There must remain 
heights and possibilities yet unexplored. ‘Eye hath not 
seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart 
of man, the things which God hath prepared for them 
that love Him.’ 

But, some one will say, it is the Infinite Life that 
endures; you and I are but the waves which, after a 
moment of seemingly individual existence, sink back into 
the boundless sea—the wave is but a ripple, it is the 
ocean that endures. Of course the individual life is 


x IMMORTALITY 313 


bound up with, and is part of, the larger Life; but 
that Life is not to be envisaged as an ocean, as a sort 
of pool of vital fluid—that fallacy I have already 
dealt with (p. 90). Life is alive; and whenever it 
manifests itself it is as an individualising principle. If 
we must think in metaphors—or rather because we 
inevitably so think—let us be careful to choose the least 
misleading. Let us not liken life to something lifeless— 
a pool or a fluid—but to something creative and alive. 
We may, perhaps, picture the individual life as a youthful 
musician, the body as his first violin—good enough to 
learn to play on, but to be discarded for something 
better later on.’ 

There are who urge that what we love is only that 
element in our friends which is Divine and eternal, and 
that, therefore, it will suffice if we think of this element 
only in them as destined to survive—and that only as 
part of the infinite Divine life to be manifested again in 
higher achievements of personal existence. 


Whether [writes Mr. H. G. Wells*] we live for ever or die 
to-morrow does not affect righteousness. Many people seem 
to find the prospect of a final personal death unendurable. 
This impresses me as egotism. I have no such appetite for a 
separate immortality; what, of me, is identified with God, is 
God; what is not, is of no more permanent value than the 
snows of yester-year. 


There is a note of idealism here; but is it really 
true to say that ‘it does not affect righteousness’ whether 
we live for ever or die to-morrow? For, if the Divine 
righteousness may lightly ‘scrap’ the individual, human 
righteousness may do the same. The most conspicuous 

* The next two paragraphs are transcribed from one of my essays in 


Immortality. 
7 In God the Invisible King. 


314 REALITY CHAP. 


mark of the moral level of any community is the value 
it sets on human personality. Readiness to sacrifice his 
own life for others may be a measure of the moral 
achievement of the individual, but the moral height of a 
society is shown by its reluctance to sacrifice even its 
least worthy members. The disinterestedness which is 
content with a Universe in which his own ego will soon 
cease to be, is much to the credit of Mr. Wells; it would 
not be to God’s credit were He equally content. 

That seems to me to be the point. In the last resort, 
it is not a question of what we personally would be 
content with for ourselves, or what opinions we entertain 
as to our own individual value. It is what the Universe 
is worth. What can we say of It, or the Power behind It, 
if It treats the individuality of heroic souls like oyster- 
shells at a banquet, whisked from the table to make 
room for the next course? It is all very well to talk of 
love and right and eternal values as things worth while 
for their own sake. These things are not self-subsistent; 
they are only names we give to qualities and experiences 
apprehended by conscious minds—our minds at any — 
rate, and, if there be a God, by His. But if there be no 
God, and if we who see and feel these values are only 
creatures of a day, somehow they shrink into pathetic 
aspirations. Values shrivel unless they are recognised 
as such by some Immortal Being. 

Christ taught man to think of God as the All-Father. 
But He has done something else. By His life and 
character Christ has compelled us to make the choice 
between a practical atheism and a thought of God as 
being at least as good as Christ Himself. If the Universe 
is the product of blind mechanical energy, or even of 
some half-conscious Life-force, then the heart and mind 
of Jesus is just a happy accident; it is merely the most 


% IMMORTALITY 315 


remarkable of all the unexpected by-products cast up 
by the evolutionary process in its age-long aimless track. 
But if there 7s a purpose behind it all, then that life and 
character are not to be explained as accidents. They are 
an evidence of what the Creative Mind that wills it all 
is on occasion capable of producing. But no creative 
mind can produce something higher and nobler than 
itself. Therefore the emergence on the plane of history 
of the man Jesus forces thought to a decision. Either 
no purpose controls the universe at all and there is no 
God, or else that purpose is as noble, that mind has 
thoughts as high, as the purpose and the mind of Christ. 

I must make my choice. There are things which 
make it hard to believe in a living, loving God. But 
reflection shows that it is harder still to accept the para- 
dox that all is accident. I make my choice. What 
follows? ‘If ye then being evil know how to give good 
gifts unto your children, how much more your heavenly 
Father’. If a human parent would not allow the 
extinction of a cherished child, is God likely to consent 
to such a thing? If a reasonably good employer hates 
to regard his workmen simply as ‘hands’, as mere 
instruments for working out his purpose, are God’s 
thoughts less than his? If a general loves the men whom 
at times he is compelled to treat as ‘cannon-fodder’ inci- 
dental to the attainment of a larger end, will God care 
less? Will He be content to treat a living personality 
like a rocket which, once its cascade of stars has been 
displayed, has fulfilled its function and falls back unre- 
garded into the surrounding gloom? 

In the belief in immortality the rationality of the 
Universe is at stake. By our decision as to this the 
quality of Reality is finally appraised. If there is a God 
at all, we are His children, and He must care for us. If we 


316 REALITY CHAP. X 


believe in God at all, it is not sentiment, nor self-deluded 
hope, it is the coldest logic, that compels us to approach 
the question of a future life from the standpoint of His 
greatness, not that of our littleness and weariness, our 
doubts and our despair. ‘The souls of the righteous are 
in the hands of God’,—and we may be content to leave 
them there. : 


Though earth and man were gone, 
And suns and universes ceased to be, 
And Thou wert left alone, 
Every existence would exist in Thee. 


There is not room for Death, 

Nor atom that his might could render void! 
Thou—Thou art Being and Breath, 

And what Thou art may never be destroyed. 


APPENDICES 


I 
DREAM PSYCHOLOGY AND THE MYSTIC VISION 


II 
INSTINCT AND MORALITY 


317 





APPENDIX I 
DREAM SYMBOLISM AND THE MYSTIC VISION* 


VISIONS AND DREAMS 


As long ago as 1912, I attempted (in my essay, ‘The 
Historic Christ’, in Foundations) a brief study of the 
significance of the vision and the voice at the baptism 
of Jesus, in the light, on the one hand of the ‘call’ of 
the Hebrew prophets, and on the other of modern 
psychology. It did not, however, occur to me to con- 
sider the phenomena of the Mystic Vision in general 
from the standpoint of dream-symbolism until after I 
had become acquainted with the Indian mystic, Sadhu 
Sundar Singh, and had published an account of his 
visions.. It so happened that before meeting him I 
had been studying the literature of ‘the New Psychol- 
ogy, and had, through the privilege of personal 
friendship, enjoyed opportunities of discussing with 
expert psychologists many of the questions which it 
raises. I had also begun to collect dreams—under 
circumstances which admitted of their being scientifically 
studied. The confluence in my mind of two lines of 
investigation, religious and psychological, showed me 
the need of attempting to supplement and carry a stage 
further the psychological interpretation of concepts 

1 Reprinted, with considerable expansion by kind permission, from 


the Hibbert Journal, January 1925. 
2In The Sadhu, Streeter and Appasamy. (Macmillan, 1921.) 


319 


320 REALITY APPEN. 


like Inspiration and Revelation worked out by my 
friend, the late C. W. Emmet in his essays in The Spirit.” 

The psychological interpretation of any intellectual, 
or indeed of any spiritual, experience is never a complete 
one. The results of a mental activity are not the same 
thing as the mechanism of the process which conditions 
_its operation. Again, it is too soon to affirm that Psy- 
chology has reached conclusions in regard to the inter- 
pretation of dream symbolism to which the word 
‘established’ can safely be applied. Accordingly, what 
follows is set down subject to the proviso that it is a 
study of the mechanism, not of the validity, of certain 
types of mystic experience, and that, even so, it 1s of a 
very tentative character. 

The pioneer definition of Freud that a dream is the 
symbolic expression of an unfulfilled wish, is too narrow.’ 
A dream may be the expression of anything which is 
seriously exercising the sub-conscious mind. The dream 
of a neurotic suffering from some panic shock, some acute 
wound to self-esteem, or from a perversion or repression 
of the sex instinct, is likely to reflect—though usually in 
a form ingeniously disguised—his particular trouble. 
And in so far as similar emotions affect healthy 
persons, they may also affect their dreams. But what 
I am mainly concerned in this chapter to show is that, 
when the waking thoughts of a normal person are deeply 
and earnestly preoccupied with some philosophical or 
religious quest, this may, on occasion, find symbolic 
expression in a dream.” 


1 Ed. B. H. Streeter. (Macmillan, 1919.) 

2 Cf. Maurice Nicoll, Dream Psychology (Froude, 1917); also W. 
M‘Dougall, An Outline of Abnormal Psychology. (Methuen, 1926.) 

* There is evidence that the solution of intellectual problems of quite 
another kind has sometimes come in dreams. John Wesley’s Journal 
contained numerous cryptographic words and sentences which for a long 
time baffled interpreters. Nehemiah Curnock, who deciphered them, 


a 


I APPENDICES 321 


I select three examples from my collection of dreams. 
In each case, before recounting the dream, I will suc- 
cinctly indicate the preoccupation that it expressed. 

(1) The first is a dream of my own. One day a friend 
congratulated me on the essay ‘God and the World’s 
Pain’ in the book Concerning Prayer. This set me think- 
ing, or rather recalling an old train of thought. The 
distinctive features in the essay had been suggested to 
me by reflection on certain harassing circumstances in 
my life which I had resented at the time of their occur- 
rence, quite as much on account of the interruption they 
had made in a projected work on constructive theology, 
as on account of the actual pain they caused. But I was 
coming to feel that my unhappy experience had taught 
me something which perhaps had made it worth while. 

That night I dreamt that I was in a certain set of 
rooms in college where a thinly attended meeting of 
members of a certain religious society was assembled. 
We were about to begin prayer. To prevent intrusion, 
I ‘sported the oak’, that is, closed the outer door—a 
thing, by the way, I should never have done in real life. 
As soon as I knelt, there was a knocking at the oak. 
Much annoyed at the interruption I looked out, and there 
appeared two more members of the society whom I 
gladly welcomed. The same thing occurred again; and 
I let in another two, with the feeling that the meeting, 
which had promised to be sparse, was going to prove a 
good one after all. 

The symbolism is obvious. The prayer-meeting is 
my theological writing; the late-comers are the anxieties 
which, at first resented as interruptions, are ultimately 


writes (vol. i. p. 72 of the Standard Edition): ‘The first effective clue 
Nee given to the writer in a dream’. 7 owe this reference to the kindness 
Mr. T. E. Brigden. 


322 REALITY APPEN, 


found to have contributed materially to the value of the 
work. It is, of course, possible that a psycho-analyst, 
by following up in detail associations connected with 
the ‘manifest content’ of such a dream, might have 
found that it had some deeper ‘latent’ content as 
well; but this would not invalidate its primary sym- 
bolism. 

(2) My literary collaborator, the late Miss Lily 
Dougall, was once arranging for a small conference of 
philosophers and theologians to thresh out a problem to 
_ which for many years she had given considerable thought, 
and on which she held decided and somewhat original 
opinions. One of the philosophers sent her beforehand 
a memorandum he had prepared on the question. She 
was delighted to find that this maintained what was 
virtually her own position, but did so with a command 
of corroboration or refutation from other philosophers 
which she admired but could not emulate. On re-reading 
it, however, a misgiving came into her mind as to 


whether, like as his position was to hers, he had really 


quite got what seemed to her to be the true view. 

She dreamt that her philosopher friend was showing 
her round a new house which he had just built. It was 
of stone of exactly the same kind and colour as her own 
house at Cumnor; but, whereas this is built on two sides 
of a square, his house formed a quadrangle and was alto- 
gether on a grander scale. They went inside; but here, 
though the appointments and conveniences were in 
general quite to her taste, she yet felt that somehow 
it would not be so comfortable to live in as her own 
home. 

The symbolism is again perfect. The house of the 
same stone is the identity of the general argument. The 
quadrangle—like a college—is the superior academic 


a 


i APPENDICES 323 


_ learning and address. The lacking comfort within is the 
suspicion of subtle inward disagreement. 

(3) My third illustration—a dream of an American 
missionary *~—adds a new point, in that it belongs to the 
category of ‘vision’ rather than of dream. By this I 
mean that the appearance left behind it a deep and 
abiding conviction that it was somehow real, that it was 
significant and veridical, in a sense that dreams are not. 
In telling me of it my friend reiterated the remark, ‘T 
often wonder why more people cannot have a vision of 
Christ like that given me. Then many more would 
believe in Him and in His presence’. 

At recurrent intervals ever since his student days he 
had been perplexed by the question of the relation of the 
Divinity and Humanity in Christ. One afternoon he 
read a book by Dr. Du Bose in which the idea of perfect 
manhood as being essentially and in itself an expression 
of divinity was worked out in a way which appealed to 
him as never before. Here, he felt, was the solution of 
his difficulty. The Humanity of Christ, instead of being 
a problem, became a gospel. Besides that, it was a 
gospel which he felt would appeal to the direct simplicity 
of the Chinese mind, and facilitate that translation of 
Christianity into terms of Chinese thought which was a 
central element in his missionary policy. 

That night he dreamt that he was sitting at table in 
the downstairs room of his own house; but all the 
appointments and fittings were those of the ordinary 
Chinese home, and Christ and His Apostles, all in 
Chinese dress, were sitting there; and he talked famil- 
iarly with them, feeling radiantly happy and quite at 
home. They rose and left the room, and as they passed 
out one of the Apostles picked up a basket woven of 

1It is with his consent that I make it public. 


324 REALITY APFEN. 


reeds such as the Chinese use for marketing, and, point- 
ing to Christ, said, ‘He made that. It is just the same as 
the other baskets, only it is perfect, quite perfect’. My 
friend woke with an extraordinary conviction that it was 
all veridical. : 

The symbolism of this vision needs no elucidation; 
but I may add that, as he told it me, the recollection of 
the time when he had thus seen Christ brought a glow to 
his face almost like that I have seen on that of Sundar 
Singh when he recalls his visions. I have styled this 
last a ‘vision’, rather than a dream, not only because of 
its peculiar vividness, but also because of the conviction 
of validity—of being in some sense veridical—which 
accompanied it.’ It is significant that the conscious 
thought which had preceded it had come to my friend as 
an illuminating revelation on a problem about which he 
greatly cared—that is to say, it brought emotional as 
well as intellectual satisfaction. I conclude that it was 
the great practical and emotional significance to him 
of the idea expressed which determined the peculiar 
intensity of the dream experience—not conversely. That 
is a vital point. 

There are two facts which emerge quite clearly in all 
three instances—and indeed, to the best of my knowl- 
edge, in most, if not all, of the dreams a psychologist is 
called upon to analyse. First, the materials out of which 
the picture is constructed are derived from the dreamer’s 

1'The distinction made in popular language, between a vision (to 
which significance is attached as a message from some unseen Power) 
and an ordinary dream, recognises an outward resemblance combined 
with a difference in content. A missionary who had worked in Uganda 
for many years told me that in the native dialects two quite different 
words are in use. He added that very frequently the conversion of a 
native to Christianity was preceded by a vision—the man’s father, for 
example, would appear to him, and say, ‘Listen to the white man’s 


teaching’—such a vision being regarded as on an entirely different level 
from a mere dream. 


: APPENDICES 325 


own reading or experience, though the familiar details are 
combined in unfamiliar ways. Secondly, in each case 
there has previously been a serious preoccupation with 
some particular problem, and this has been re-excited 
by some event shortly before the dream—a friend’s 
remark, a memorandum, a chapter in a book. In all 
of them the dream expression is the effect and not the 
cause of the preoccupation; or, more truly perhaps, the 
result of a continuation in the subconscious regions of 
the self of the effort to digest or even carry further the 
solution of a problem first propounded in the conscious 
life. 

With these dreams I would compare one of St. 
Francis of Assisi, which, since it is reported by Celano 
(and so presumably was recounted by the Saint) as an 
instance of his being ‘cheered by revelations’ by the 
Lord, we may suppose was accompanied by that con- 
viction of being in some sense ‘veridical’ which justifies 
it being spoken of as a vision. 


At length, overcome by the steadfastness of St. Francis’ 
entreaties (the Cardinal) gave in, and strove thenceforth to 
further his business with the Pope. At that time the Lord 
Pope Innocent III. ruled over the Church, . . . he granted 
their request and carried it into complete effect: . . . and said 
to them . . . ‘When the Lord Almighty shall multiply you in 
number and in grace, ye shall report it to me with joy, and I 
will grant you more than this and shall with more confidence 
entrust greater things to you’. 

One night when he was gone to sleep he seemed to be 
walking along a road by the side of which stood a very lofty 
tree. That tree was fair and strong, exceeding thick and high. 
And it came to pass that as he came near to it, and stood 
beneath it, wondering at its beauty and height, he himself 
grew to such a height that he touched the top of the tree, 
and taking it in his hand, very easily bowed it to the ground. 
And so indeed it was done; since the Lord Innocent, the high- 


326 REALITY APPEN. 


est and loftiest tree in the world, bowed himself so graciously 
to his will and petition.* 


The examples I have quoted are all instances of the 
expression in dream symbolism of emotions and ideas 
which had already become clearly explicit in conscious- 
ness. For that reason they form an excellent illustra- 
tion of the principles and nature of dream symbolism. 
But more commonly dreams appear to be an expression 
of emotions or ideas which are surging in the subcon- 
scious regions of the self, but which have not yet found 
expression in the full daylight of conscious reflection. 
That indeed is their main value to the psychotherapist— 
they reveal to the physician the existence of worries, of 
an effort to solve some problem of the inner life, of which 
the patient is himself quite unaware. Here the dream is 
the precursor of conscious recognition—so much so that 
the conscious recognition may never actually follow. 

A psychologist who had read the first draft of this 
article writes: 


The view of dreams which I maintain, as distinct from 
Freud’s wish fulfilment, is that dreams serve a biological pur- 
pose—namely, in preparing us to meet the problems of life. 
They obviously do so in cases of external dangers—such as 
slipping on a cliff, being under shell fire, falling into a river, 
etc.—for in our dreams we live over the experience again, and 
so gradually learn how to adapt ourselves to such outward 
circumstances. In other words, dreams stand in the place of 
actual experience. But of course the greatest problems that 
we have to deal with are the problems that arise from our own 
impulses, and here again it seems to me that the dream is 
serving the biological end in attempting to solve these internal 
problems and to present us with a solution of our internal 
difficulties as of our external. This view of the function of 
dreams is very much in keeping with your general argument, 


> I Celano, pt. 1, xiii. E.T. by A. G. Ferrers Howell. (Methuen.) 


I APPENDICES 327 


for in the cases you mention there is a problem in the patient’s 
mind and one that is solved by the dream. 


This last point is well illustrated in the well-known 
vision of St. Francis of the house full of arms ‘for him 
and his knights’,» which was a turning-point in his 
spiritual career. This is the more certainly historical 
since his biographer Celano half misses its real point, 
for it was clearly a step forward towards the solution of 
an inner conflict not solved as yet in conscious thought. 
The symbolism in which it found expression was sug- 
gested by the recent invitation of a local noble to take 
part in a warlike expedition to Apulia; but, as the 
subsequent refusal of that invitation shows, it was really 
the moment of crystallisation, so to speak, of his 
resolve to accept the alternative call to be a knight- 
errant of Christ—the creator of a brotherhood of spiritual 
‘Knights of the Round Table’.’ 

By a series of easy transitions I have now bridged the 
gulf between a quite ordinary dream of my own and the 
vision which signalised the conversion of St. Francis. 
This illustrates the importance of the principle I have 
already stated, that, in any spiritual experience, it is 
vital to distinguish the content from the mere form. The 
vision which converts a saint or illuminates a prophet 
has a value and quality quite different from a casual 
dream; but the psychological mechanism in accordance 
with which the mind of the saint or prophet functions 
does not seem to differ fundamentally from that of the 
ordinary man in an ordinary dream. 

In the light of these principles I proceed to examine 
two Biblical visions—the Vision of Zechariah, ch. iv., of 
the seven-branch candlestick and the two olive trees; 
and the Vision of St. Peter, Acts x. 9 ff. 


1T Celano, pt. 1, i. 5. * Speculum Perfectionis, 72. 


328 REALITY APPEN. 


In the Vision of Zechariah there are three stages: 
(1) The vision itself—a golden candlestick (strictly a 
‘lampstand’) with seven lamps, fed by pipes from the 
two olive trees on either side. (2) The message, ‘Not 
by might, nor by power, but by my spirit saith the 
Lord of Hosts’. (8) The interpretation of the sym- 
bolism by the angel. (An angelus interpretans frequently 
occurs in Apocalyptic.) This last corresponds psycho- 
logically to that recognition on waking of some part of 
the meaning of a dream which does sometimes occur, 
especially if the dreamer has any knowledge of modern 
theories of dream interpretation; though more often 
only the feeling-tone—which is frequently the significant 
element in a dream—lasts on after waking. 

It so happens that we know enough of the historical 
situation to see the relation of this vision to the circum- 
stances of the prophet. To Zechariah the hope of the 
nation lies in the rebuilding of the Temple which he and 
Haggai had roused the people to attempt. But 
obstacles, humanly speaking insurmountable, inter- 
vene. The vision expresses to the prophet’s mind 
two things: first, success is assured, in spite of the 
apparent feebleness of the human effort, by the fact 
that the enterprise has the Divine support; secondly, 
in Zerubbabel (the Governor of Davidie descent) and 
Joshua (the High Priest) adequate human agents are 
provided. The symbolism is clear. The seven-branch 
candlestick fittingly stands for the Temple; the two 
olive trees are the two anointed persons (Heb. ‘sons of 
oil’); the oil which passes through pipes to the lamps 
symbolises their joint activity in promoting the rebuild- 
ing, and also the fact that as sacred anointed persons 
they are marked out as ‘channels’ of the Divine power 
on whom the people can rely. 


I APPENDICES 329 


Let us now consider the Vision of St. Peter before he 
went to see Cornelius, recorded in Acts x. 9ff. Critics 
have raised doubts as to its historicity—but Psychology 
points the other way.’ The problem of the admission 
of Gentiles to the Church which Peter had soon to face 
was one created by the Jewish Law which made the 
Gentile unclean. It is entirely in accordance with the 
laws of dream symbolism that the problem of Peter, 
hungering for souls but held back by the Law which 
spoke of unclean men, should present itself in a vision 
as the problem of Peter, hungering for supper but 
hesitating to kill and eat on account of the Law which 
spoke of unclean meats. 

Psychologists believe that there is always a reason 
—frequently a discernible reason—in the history of the 
subject’s mind why one symbol should suggest itself 
rather than another; and why in a dream any one 
detail occurs rather than another. In this case we can 
detect a reason for certain of the details: (1) Before 
the trance, Peter, we are told, was actually waiting for 
his dinner to be cooked. (2) In Mark vii. 18 ff—that is, 
in the Gospel which is largely based on Peter’s reminis- 
cences—a principle which might be applied in deter- 
mining the obligation of the Law in such cases is laid 
down by Christ; only the particular case in regard to 
which it is actually applied in the text is that of unclean 
meats. There were thus reasons, both past and present, 
physical and intellectual, why the symbol chosen should 
be connected with eating meats. (3) There is, moreover, 
another curious little detail for which, if we look for it, 
we can find a psychological explanation. The ‘vessel’ 
in which the animals are let down is described as a 


1In my opinion historical considerations also strongly favour the 
authenticity of the incident. Cf. The Four Gospels, p. 546. 


330 REALITY APPEN. 
‘mainsail’ (60@6vy). The word ‘vessel’ in the English 


version is a mistranslation—I suppose because ‘main- | 


sail’ seemed to make no sense. But in a dream there 
are generally incongruous details; moreover, a dream 
nearly always reflects something the subject has recently 
seen or heard. Here we have the desired explanation. 
Peter had fallen asleep on the top of a house which, as we 
are told in another context (x. 6), was by the seaside; the 
last thing, then, he would have seen before falling into 
the trance would have been ships with mainsails hoisted 
coming from distant lands—a ready symbol for the 
Gentile world. 

We ask, had Peter been previously brooding over the 
question of the conversion of Gentiles? Probably; it 
was a problem harder to ignore in a half-Gentile seaport 
like Joppa than in Jerusalem. I think it possible that, 
in addition to his own reflections, some telepathic wave 
from Cornelius or his messenger may have reached his 
mind in the quiescence of the trance. There is some 
evidence that telepathic influences may affect the form 


of a dream;* but I do not stress this. It is, however, © 


worth while to point out that the vision as recorded in 
the Acts fits in so exactly with what is now known of 


dream symbolism that the burden of proof lies with the © 


critics who would deny its historicity. Visions, in ages 
when they are regarded as the principal channel of direct 
revelations from the Divine, are naturally taken very 
seriously. And that means that they are quoted in con- 
troversy as evidence of the Divine approval of a certain 
line of conduct; as such, they are likely to be recorded 
in writing sooner than events which a modern historian 
would regard as more interesting or important. And if 
the disciples of St. Francis put on record his visions, 
*Cf. The Spirit, p. 46. 


a. 


: APPENDICES 331 


surely those of St. Peter would think it worth while to 
record a vision which he, and they, regarded as a Divine 
injunction to admit Gentiles to the Church. 


DiIscovERY AND REVELATION 


The question must now be raised, What degree, if 
any, of validity are we to ascribe to such visionary 
experiences? 

In the modern world the mental balance of a seer 
of vision is suspect—and, in general, not without good 
reason. The primitive mind thinks in pictures, and in 
pictures it reasons and resolves; but the intellectual 
tradition of Europe for the last four centuries has trained 
the race in conceptual thinking. In the half-waking 
life of dreams, symbolic thinking is still universal; but 
in full waking consciousness it is usually only the less 
vigorous minds, or vigorous minds when temporarily 
unstrung, that reach important conclusions along this 
route. 

But at earlier stages of human culture, this rule did 
not hold; visions were often the moments of supreme 
illumination for the most vigorous intellects and the 
most creative wills. We must then push our analysis a 
stage further. The vision form may be natural at one 
stage of culture, or to one type of temperament, but 
unnatural to. another. The psychological fact, however, 
for which the vision stands is the sudden emergence 
into consciousness of an idea or resolve reached in the 
subconscious. And to this there are parallels in modern 
scientific discovery which have an important bearing, 
mutatis mutandis, on our view of the validity to be 
ascribed to vision experiences in ages when to do one’s 
thinking in that way was not a sign of arrested develop- 
ment or of remoteness from the world’s culture. 


332 REALITY APPEN. 


The famous mathematician, Henri Poincaré, gave 
the world an illuminating study from his own first-hand 
experience of the psychology of the flash of discovery 
in the quest for scientific knowledge. Familiar as his 
conclusions are, I venture to quote certain passages— 
italicising words which have a special bearing on the 
subject of this Appendix. 


At this moment I left Caen, where I was then living, to take 
part in a geological conference arranged by the School of 
Mines. The incidents of the journey made me forget my 
mathematical work. When we arrived at Coutances we got 
into a brake to go for a drive, and just as I put my foot on the 
step, the idea came to me, though nothing in my former 
thoughts seemed to have prepared me for it, that the trans- 
formations I had used to define Fuchsian functions were 
identical with those of non-Euclidian geometry. I made no 
verification, and had no time to do so, since I took up the 
conversation again as soon as I had sat down in the brake, 
but I felt absolute certainty at once. When I got to Caen 
I verified the result at my leisure to satisfy my conscience. 

I then began to study arithmetical questions without any 
ereat apparent result, and without suspecting that they could 
have the least connection with my previous researches. Dis- 
eusted at my want of success, I went away to spend a few days 
at the seaside, and thought of entirely different things. One 
day, as I was walking on the cliff, the idea came to me again 
with the same characteristics of conciseness, suddenness and 
ummediate certainty, that arithmetical transformations of 
indefinite ternary quadratic forms are identical with those of 
non-Euclidian geometry.* 


A close parallel to this experience is to be found in 
the realm of religious and philosophical speculation in 
the Preface to Anselm’s Proslogion, in which he tells 
how, after abandoning in despair the quest for a succinct 
and convincing argument for the existence of God, there 


* Science and Method, trans. by F. Maitland (Nelson), p. 53f. The 
above is followed by other examples of similar experiences. 


: APPENDICES 333 


suddenly came into his mind the famous Ontological 
argument. 

The difference between the flash of intellectual 
understanding chronicled by Poincaré (or Anselm) and 
the crisis of a sudden conversion would appear to be 
that the problem which has been solved in the sub- 
conscious mind is, in the one case, an intellectual, in the 
other, a practical and emotional one. But the cases are 
alike in that it would appear that a solution reached 
below the level of clear consciousness invades the con- 
scious mind with overwhelming force, producing, in the 
case of the intellectual proposition a feeling of certainty, 
in the case of the practical crisis a feeling that by some 
supernatural force the whole life has been changed. 

In the case of Sadhu Sundar Singh it is notable that 
problems of both kinds are solved in visions. ‘The 
original vision which led to his conversion followed, and 
solved, an intense emotional and practical conflict. But 
his subsequent visions—when he is carried, so he feels, 
into the Third Heaven, where he gazes on Christ and 
communes with Spiritual Beings—solve, I gathered from 
him, not vractical difficulties but theoretical points of 
doctrine or exegesis. In this respect they are analogous 
to the class of dream or vision last mentioned. That is 
to say, they are not the expression in symbolic form of 
an idea already clearly grasped in conscious experience; 
they are rather the means by which a baffling problem 
attains.a clear solution. They correspond to the flash 
of illumination, the ‘bright idea’ which springs unbidden 
from the depths of the mind (often when one is thinking 
of quite different matters), and gives the answer to some 
standing perplexity. 

The distinction between a conviction that suddenly ~ 
invades the conscious mind and a voice or a vision 


334 REALITY APPEN. 


apparently proceeding from outside the self, is, I con- 
ceive, largely a matter of a difference in psychological 
make-up and in the environment or education of the 
subject. In this country, at any rate, and in the present 
age, conversion is not often the result of visions, and 
conviction rarely comes to a head with the accompani- 
ment of supernatural-seeming auditions. 


So far, I have been concerned to emphasise the fact 
that it is the quality, not the manner, of the illumination 
that matters. I proceed to argue that (a) the quality of 
an apprehension—whether of scientific truth, or of ethical 
and religious values—which is reached as the result of 
an unconscious process is conditioned by the intensity 
of previous effort on the part of the conscious mind; 
but (b) nevertheless, the feeling-tone of the experience is 
not a safe index of its objective validity. 

These points also are brought out by Poincaré in the 
chapter from which I have already quoted. 


There is another remark to be made regarding the condi-_ 


tions of this unconscious work, which is, that it is not possible, 
or in any case not fruitful, unless it is first preceded and then 
followed by a period of conscious work. These sudden inspira- 
tions are never produced (and this is sufficiently proved already 
by the examples I have quoted) except after some days of 
voluntary efforts which appeared absolutely fruitless, in which 
one thought one had accomplished nothing, and seemed to be 
on a totally wrong track. These efforts, however, were not as 
barren as one thought; they set the unconscious machine in 
motion, and without them it would not have worked at all, 
and would not have produced anything. 

The necessity for the second period of conscious work can 
be even more readily understood. Jt is necessary to work out 
the results of the insmration, to deduce the immediate conse- 
quences and put them in order, and to set out the demonstra- 
tions; but, above all, it 1s necessary to verify them. I have 


A, |: he 


t APPENDICES 330 


spoken of the feeling of absolute certainty which accompanies 
the inspiration; and in the cases quoted this feeling was not 
deceptive, and more often than not this will be the case. But 
we must beware of thinking that this is a rule without excep- 
tions. Often the feeling deceives us without being any less dis- 
tinct on that account, and we only detect it when we attempt 
to establish the demonstration. I have observed this fact most 
notably with regard to ideas that have come to me in the 
morning or at night when I have been in bed in a semi- 
- somnolent condition. 


In the above quotation two points are strikingly 
brought out: (1) The problems which the subconscious 
solves are problems in regard to which the conscious 
mind is specially interested, and to deal with which it 
has been specially trained. (2) False conclusions may 
at times be accompanied with a feeling of absolute con- 
viction that they are true. 

The second point clearly gives us the key to the 
psychology of the false prophet; I would venture the 
inference that the former does the same by the true 
prophet. Only to him who has trained himself in high 
thinking and noble living will ethical or religious illumi- 
nation come; and it was because the Hebrews as a race 
had specially associated righteousness with Religion that 
conditions favourable to the production of a line of 
prophets existed among them in a unique degree. Again, 
just as conclusions reached by the mathematician in 
the mood of inspiration need the verification of the cold 
daylight of rational thought, so those reached by the 
prophet must be tested in real life. ‘By their fruits ye 
shall know them’. 

If we attempt to apply this to the particular case 
of the voiee and the vision in which the ‘call’ of Jesus 
found expression, two points stand out. 

(1) We are entitled to assume that the moment of 


336 REALITY APPEN. 


illumination was preceded by long reflection on large 
issues. And this holds good, whatever may be thought 
in detail of the conclusions that I have myself drawn 
(p. 184) from the use of the words ‘Beloved Son’. 

The Messianic expectation, as current among the 
Jews of our Lord’s time, had various forms; but amid 
all variations two things are constant. (a) The Christ 
was to be the culminating point in the history of a 
people selected by God from all the nations of the earth 
for a unique purpose; (b) His coming was to be a final 
vindication to the world of the righteousness of God. 
If the validity of a ‘revelation’ is to be judged by its 
‘fruits, the question arises, Was Jesus right or wrong in 
thinking that a Divine purpose of this character would 
find fulfilment in Him? 

In the nineteen centuries that have since elapsed 
reasons have accumulated for believing that He was 
right; nothing, I submit, has happened to suggest that 
He was wrong. 


As originally drafted this Appendix was intended to 
illustrate certain points in my book, The Four Gospels; * 
but consideration of space forbade its insertion there. 
Subsequently, an account of its relevancy to the discus- 
sion (p. 181 ff.) of the Messianic consciousness of Jesus, 
I decided to print it in this volume. But as I was 
reading through the proofs it occurred to me that it 
had a further appropriateness to its present place which 
I had not at first suspected. 

Looking back over the book as a whole, I see that 
what I have really done has been to start off from what 
—but for the unfortunate associations of the word—I 
should have called ‘The Myth’. I have then asked, 
How far is the sublime intuition which it expresses 

* See footnotes in that book, pp. 392 and 546. 


I APPENDICES 337 


capable of verification? Using the word ‘inspiration’ 
' In much the same sense as it is used by Poincaré in the 
last quotation, it is clear that ‘The Myth’ came by 
‘Inspiration’. It represents something that came in this 
way to the Master, as interpreted by further ‘inspira- 
tion’—more especially by St. Paul and St. John. We 
note that Poincaré’s first condition for the validity of an 
inspiration is obviously fulfilled; for this particular inspi- 
ration was in point of fact preceded by a concentration 
on the religious quest (p. 62 f.)—on the part not only of 
Christ and the Apostles but of a nation—of an intensity 
not elsewhere paralleled in human history. ‘It is neces- 
sary, says Poincaré, formulating his second condition, 
to work out the results of the inspiration, to deduce the 
immediate consequences and put them in order, and to 
set out the demonstration’. That sentence would aptly 
describe the method I have followed in this book; it 
also, I submit, justifies my attempt to apply verification 
of a scientific character to what was originally reached 
by ‘inspiration’. 

What Science calls ‘discovery’, and what Religion 
names ‘revelation’, alike depend on ‘inspiration’; but 
these differ in two respects. 

(1) The knowledge of Reality with which Religion is 
primarily concerned is of Its qualitative aspect. If the 
most significant element in Reality is Conscious Life and 
the very essence of such Life is its quality (p. 211 f.), 
qualitative knowledge will be the more profound. 

(2) God operates at no further remove from a 
Poincaré than from an Isaiah. But by the prophet, used 
to conscious communion with the Divine, His presence is 
realised; such realisation is irrelevant to the subject 
matter investigated by Science, but is vital where the 
knowledge sought concerns the quality of the Divine Life. 


APPENDIX II 
INSTINCT AND MORALITY 


BIOLOGICALLY man is one of the higher mammals. 
This kinship between man and animal is recognisable, 
not only in regard to physical structure, but also in the 
nature of certain fundamental instincts. The importance 
of this fact for the theory of Ethics was first clearly 
recognised by Prof. W. M‘Dougall.* M‘Dougall shows 
how the recognition of instinctive tendencies to certain 
types of action as part of man’s inherited make-up 
renders obsolete the assumption of all Hedonist philos- 
ophies that a conscious choice of pleasure (or avoidance 
of pain) is the sole motivation of human conduct. He 
refrains from pointing out its bearing on that theory 
of ‘original sin’ worked out by St. Augustine, which 
has dominated Calvinistic and Lutheran no less than 
Medieval Theology. The old theologians, I would 
hasten to add, were right in seeing in moral evil the 
hardest and most vital problem of the race; it is not 
their assertion of its importance, but their account of its 
origin and nature, that is shown to be gravely misleading. 
But if modern Psychology is opening up the way to a 
more scientific diagnosis of the origin and nature of 
moral evil, there dawns a gleam of hope for human 
betterment. Christianity has done much to raise the 
/ moral standard of Europe, but surely in nineteen 


*In his Social Psychology. (Methuen, 1908.) 
338 


APPEN. II APPENDICES 339 


centuries it ought to have effected more. But if it 
should appear that its failure to cope with human sin 
was in any large measure due to its crude theory of 
the cause and nature of sin, there is room for hope. 
Improved diagnosis may suggest an improved treat- 
ment; and improved treatment may do much towards 
cure. 

The instincts, like the physical body, are in them- 
selves good; and in the primitive forest man’s instincts, 
we may conjecture, were adapted to his environment 
as harmoniously as those of other animals in their 
native haunts. They are very far from harmonious 
adaptations to the artificial environment of an elaborate 
civilisation. Man’s greatest problem is so to discipline, 
educate, and on occasion redirect them, that in the far 
richer but more testing environment of civilised society 
they may become creative, not destructive, of the highest 
values. But the key-word of such training is ‘sublima- 
tion’,» not repression. Instincts are the raw material 
out of which—for better or for worse—character can be 
formed. But character is related to instinct much as is 
form to matter in Art. For a statue marble is essential, 
but whether this matter becomes a sublime work of art 
or a hideous failure depends on the form imparted 
by the artist. So im the development of character 
the instincts constitute the raw material; but whether 
man rises high above, or falls far beneath, the animal, 
depends on the kind of organisation and ‘education’ 
imparted to this material, and whether this re-forma- 
tion takes place: in accord with higher or lower ethical 
ideals. 

If, then, I am told that Psychology has shown that 
altruism is nothing more than the primitive herd- 

1Cf, J. A. Hadfield, op. cit., p. 152 ff. 


340 REALITY APPEN, 


instinct,’ what I dissent from is, not the reference to the 


herd-instinct, but the qualification ‘nothmg more’. | 
am inclined to reply that, on the same showing, egoism 
in ‘nothing more’ than the even more primitive instinct 
of self-assertion. At the animal level one instinct is 
neither better nor worse than another. Man is so 
constituted that his instincts sometimes move him 
towards action primarily in the interest of the herd, at 
other times towards action primarily self-centred. The 
fact is one of immense importance; but in itself it 
throws no light upon what line of action he should 
take, zf and when these instincts prompt to contra- 
dictory courses. 

In real life the problem of conduct is only acute 
when I have to make a choice between the plain interests 
of myself and of my herd; or between the interests of a 
smaller and a dearer herd—my family, class, or party— 
and those of a remoter herd, my country or humanity. 
Why, then,.is it that I sometimes do actually prefer— 
and oftener perhaps feel that I ought to have preferred— 


to myself my herd, or to my own herd one more remote, 


or even an abstraction like Humanity? 

That question is one the right answer to which may 
be hard to find; but there is one answer which must be 
wrong. The decision between such alternatives of con- 
duct cannot be pictured as the result of a kind of tug-of- 
war between opposing instincts whereof the issue depends 
simply on a mechanical preponderance of forees on the 
one side or the other. Were that so, the ego instinct 
would ‘have it’ every time against the herd, and the 
nearer herd would win every time against. the more 
remote; for those instincts are strongest which appeared 


* The existence of a specific ‘herd’ instinct is questioned by some 
psychologists. But this does not affect my argument as to the relation 
of instinct and morality in its general aspect. 


. 
ee a 


iL APPENDICES 341 


earliest in the course of biological evolution, so that 
types of instinctive reaction which have been imherited 
for many generations will prevail over those more lately 
acquired. Biologically the will to live is older than the 
will to serve the herd; and while the instinct to benefit 
one’s own herd is ancient, the desire to serve Humanity 
is the last triumph of the higher ethics. If, then, we 
find that an instinct, though it be one later developed 
or artificially modified by education, sometimes conquers, 
it can only be because in some way—certain, though 
hard to- analyse or define—an ego, which is something 
more than a bundle of instincts, makes the choice. 
My ego is no mere spectator of the process, awaiting 
the automatic establishment of an equilibrium between 
opposing instincts; somehow or other (though why or 
how no man knows) I have power to weight the balance 
on the one side or the other; I can identify myself 
with this impulse rather than with that. And I can 
do this in reference to some criterion of value, which I 
call ‘good’ as distinct from ‘evil’, or ‘right’? as opposed 
to ‘wrong’. 

As a matter of fact, however, the picture of a tug-of- 
war between opposing instincts belongs rather to popular 
than to scientific psychology. A psychologist would 
prefer to describe the situation as one of conflict between 
two conceptions of the ego. I may, for example envisage 
myself as enjoying some triumphant success, but at the 
same time be aware that to identify myself with the self 
so envisaged would be to forfeit my right to regard 
myself as a man of honour. But it is still the case that 
the choice which means identifying myself with the one 
or the other of these conceptions of myself, is one that 
I feel to be a choice between a higher and lower; that is 
to say, I think of it in terms of value. 


342 REALITY APPEN. 


But can Psychology of itself supply a criterion of 
value? I submit that it cannot do this; but that 
nevertheless it is a study closely concerned with value 
in two ways. 

(1) It is often possible to show that there is a rela- 
tion psychologically conditioned between the moral 
ideals which appeal to an adult and his desire as a 
child to ‘identify’ himself with a parent or other domi- 
nant personality. But I doubt whether an appreciation 
of quality can ever be more than partially explained 
in terms of the mechanical causation of the process 
by which it was reached. Certainly that holds good 
of intellectual appreciation. My understanding of the 
Binomial Theorem was only partially ‘caused’ by the 
books and the instructors I came across at school. 
There was also involved the capacity to follow an 
argument and to see the point of an intellectual con- 
struction; and this capacity, though capable of being 
either developed or depressed by training and circum- 
stance, at (at the human level) an intrinsic element in. 
consciousness as such. There are those who would draw 
a hard-and-fast line between the faculty of intellectual 
and that of qualitative discernment—but the notion that 
there exist within consciousness any such things as 
‘faculties’, which are, in any sense at all fundamental, 
distinct, is not one that is encouraged by modern 
psychology. If in the matter of intellectual appre- 
hension it is admitted that a teacher (or an event) 
may turn the eyes of a pupil towards the light, but 
cannot give him the capacity of sight, the burden of 
proof lies with those who affirm that it is completely 
otherwise with the apprehension of value, whether moral 
or esthetic. And those who do so affirm, do so, I think, 
in the last resort because they have already made the 


Bs APPENDICES 343 


tacit assumption—not scientific, but metaphysical, in 
character—that quality is not a property of Reality, and 
that only what can be measured is real and the rest 
illusion. 

(2) Psychology can determine the conditions of mental 
health; and mental health is a thing which has value 
for its own sake. I have already alluded to Dr. Hadfield’s 
argument that ‘the urge to completeness’ of the psyche 
can only attain satisfaction as the result of the build- 
ing up of an ethical personality, and that therefore, 
mental health is to some extent dependent on moral- 
ity—and indeed may be still further promoted by 
Religion (p. 280). 

But though the possession of a Religion may be a 
condition psychologically favourable to health, no one 
can believe in a Religion simply on that account; I 
ean only believe a thing if I conceive it to be true. 
Similarly, although for perfect mental health an ethic 
may be necessary, the categorical imperative which 
impels me to live up to it does not bid me do so merely 
on grounds of health. No doubt the soundness of any 
ethical code which in practice did not in the long run 
favour mental health would be open to suspicion. Yet 
it is when circumstances are such that there is conflict 
between an ethical ideal and the health (or the material 
interests) of the individual, that the distinctively ethical 
quality of an action comes clearly into sight. 

A familiar tag will serve to illustrate this essential 
difference between Ethics and Health, 

He who fights and runs away 
May live to fight another day. 


But he who is in battle slain, 
Can never rise to fight again. 


As a bald statement of scientific fact this is irrefutable. 


344 REALITY APPEN. It 


From a strictly medical point of view the advice implied 
is good advice; considered from the standpoint of Ethics, 
it has another aspect. 

Every psychotherapist is from time to time called 
upon to give his patients advice on the conduct of their 
life which involves some moral issue; he is therefore 
bound, whether he likes it or not, to take upon himself 
something of the office of a moral guide.” But, when 
he does this, it 1s not from his psychology that he 
derives the moral principles implicit in his advice. Psy- 
chology shows why men tend to act or feel in certain 
ways, and how they tend to act in certain circumstances. 
It can tell what effect on health or nerves certain conduct 
is likely to produce. These questions are strictly within 
the domain of Science. But Psychology does not decide 
what kind of conduct is morally the best. That is a 
question for Ethics, and ultimately for Religion. It is 
often stated that in the light of the New Psychology, our 
traditional moral code, especially in regard to matters 
of sex, requires to be drastically revised. But if such 
revision is needed, mankind will insist that considerations — 
other than purely psychological shall be determinant. 
The end of man is not just to live, but to live as nobly 
as. he can. 
a psychologist who tries to get a patient to substitute the ‘reality~’ 


for the ‘pleasure-principle’ is clearly doing this, whatever views he may 
entertain on moral questions in general. 





INDEX OF NAMES 


AspRAHAM, 185 

Adler, 276 

Alexander, S., 44 

Amos, 182, and footnote 
Anselm, 226-7, 229, 231, 332-3 
Antigone, 310 

Appasamy, 3197. 

Aristotle, 125, 131 

Arnold, Thomas, 47 

Austen, Jane, 37 


Bacon, Francis, 4, 53 
Baedeker, 31, 46, 102 
Baudouin, 284, 287-8 
Bergson, 94, 118, 125, 132 
Booth, General, 278 
Born, Max, 28 
Brigden, T. E., 321 n. 
Brown, William, 279 n. 
Browning, 221 
Buddha, The, 48, 60, 142, 154, 172, 
180 n., 207 


Caiaphas, 195 

Celano, 325-6, 327 

Cicero, 228 

Clerk-Maxwell, J., 14 
Clutton-Brock, A., 209, 301 n., 311 
Confucius, 48, 142, 207 

Cornelius, 329-30 

Coué, 284-8, 290 

Croce, 65-6 

Curnock, N., 320 n. 


Darwin, C., 5, 119, 154, 171, 270 
Democritus, 4 

Descartes, 100 

Don Juan, 178, 179 

Dougall, Lily, 61 n., 322 


Driesch, Hans, 96 n. 
Du Bose, 323 


Eddington, A. S., 27 n., 28-9 
Einstein, 22, 28, 97, 131 
Elijah, 48 

Emmet, C. W., 230 n., 320 
Epicurus, 4, 211 

Ezekiel, 61, 181, 186 


Freud, 57, 76, 320, 326 


Glover, T. R., 198 n. 
Gray, G. B., 181 n. 
Green, T. H., 141 


Hadfield, J. A., 280, 283 7., 285 n., 
339 n., 343 

Haeckel, 142 

Haggai, 328 

Haldane, J. B. S., 111 

Hegel, 142 

Hippocrates, 201 

Homer, 69 

Hiigel, F. von, 64 

Hume, D., 20 

Huxley, T. H., 7, 20 


Innocent ITT., 325 
Isaiah, 637n., 181, 194, 195, 337 


James, William, 275, 278 
Jeremiah, 61 

Job, 61, 180 n., 221 
Joshua, 328 

Judas, 34 


Kant, 20-21, 112-114 
Keyserling, Count H., 55-6, 148 
Krishna, 178 

Kropotkin, 158 


345 


346 


Laplace, 4 

Lilley, A. L., 288 n. 
Lloyd Morgan, 89 
Lysaght, S. R., 577. 


M‘Dougall, W., 284, 320 n., 338 
Machiavelli, 173 

Mary Magdalene, 240 

Mary, Mother of Jesus, 240, 284 
Mary of Bethany, 48 
Mendel, 119 

Meredith, G., 38 7. 

Milton, 37, 42 

Moberly, W. H., 231 n. 
Mohammed, 48 

Moses, 47-8 

Mott, J. R., 279 


Napoleon, 165-6, 178 

Needham, J., 27 n. 

Nelson, 34 

Nettleship, R. L., 367. 

Newman, 280 

_ Newton, Isaac, 4, 80, 119, 270 

Nicoll, Maurice, 320 n. 

Nietzsche, 43, 146-8, 150, 151, 165, 
173, 178, 194, 207 


Paley, W., 6 

Pheidias, 69 n. 

Plato, 52, 126, 180 n., 201, 202, 240, 
276 

Poincaré, Henri, 332, 333, 334, 337 

Pontius Pilate, 52, 195 

Praxiteles, 201, 202 


Rashdall, H., 193 n. 

Rodin, A., 69 n. 

Russell, Bertrand, 17, 22, 29-30, 
118, 151-2, 272 n. 


REALITY 


Sadhu Sundar Singh, 2957n., 319, 
324, 333 

Schopenhauer, 114 n. 

Scott, Sir W., 223 

Shakespeare, 32, 33, 37, 41, 42, 53, 
69, 89 

Sheridan, 37 

Sherington, Sir C. §., 57 n. 


‘Socrates, 173, 195, 207 


Soddy, F., 18-9 

Spencer, Herbert, 142 

St. Augustine, 281, 338 

St. Francis of Assisi, 278, 286, 325, 
327, 330 

. John, 63, 136, 337. See Subject 
Index 

St. John the Baptist, 181, 198 

St. Paul, 63, 138, 1807n., 182, 186, 

215, 239-40, 245, 278, 337 

St. Perpetua, 310 

St. Peter, 180 n., 183, 327, 329-31 

St. Peter of Alcantara, 288 

St. Stephen, 239: 

Starbuck, 278 


8 


- 


Temple, W., 127 n. 

Tennyson, 65 

Thomson, J. A., 78, 86n”., 91, 119, 
154 n. 

Turner, 31, 46, 102 


Wallas, Graham, 303-4 
Wells, H. G., 223, 313-14 
Wesley, John, 278, 3207. 
Whitehead, A. F., 15 


Zechariah, 327-8 
Zeno, 142 
Zerubbabel, 328 
Zoroaster, 142 


INDEX OF 


AxssoLutr, The, 126-32 
Ant, The, 154 n. 
Anthropomorphism, 9, 101-2, 105-6, 
110-11, 125-6, 133-4, 137-8, 141, 
212 
The Higher, 134, 141 
Aphrodite, 42 
Art, 32-9 
Christ and, 204-6 
compared with Religion, 26, 39- 
43, 45-7, 65-9, 108-9 
contrasted with science, 
41-2 
Asceticism, 198 
Atom, The, 16-17 
Atonement, The, 226-33 
See also Cross, The 
Auto-suggestion, 238, 261-2, 284-8 


33-4, 


Basilisk, The, 153 

‘Behaviour’, 98-9 

Behaviourism, 106 

Biological Sciences, The, 95-102 
Brahma, 43, 128 


Causation, 14, 20-2, 97, 342 
Christ, Ch. VII., passim. Refer to 
Synopsis 
and other teachers, 47-8, 142, 207 
anthropomorphism of, 142 
evidence for life of, 1807. 
and Nietzsche, 43, 146-50, 194 
and Psychology, 181-3, 243, 258, 
335-7 
the image of God, 138, 174, 212, 
- 214, 244, 263, 301, 314 
See also Cross, The 
Christianity— 
and other religions, 47-8 
and ‘life’s nettle,’ 64 


SUBJECTS 


Civilisation, its moral bases, 159-71 
Classification, 79, 82-7, 273 
‘Complex’, 239 n., 254, 283 
Concerning Prayer, 138 n., 321 
Conversion, 251, 278, 334 
Co-operation as basis of civilisa- 
tion, 162-71 
Creative Evolution, 118-19, 125, 
133, 179, 224, 226, 228 
Creative Love, 170-74 
embodiment in Christ, 209 
inherent in Reality, 210-13 
condition of its action, 230-1 
Creed, The, 47, 52-4, 67 n. 
Cross, The, 63, 65-6, 174, 188-9, 
221, 232-3, 262, 304 
See also Atonement. 


Determinism. See Freewill 
Discovery, psychology of, 331-7 
Dogma, as symbol, 213-5 
Dreams, 55 n., 320-27 


Elan vital, see Life-Force 

Electrons, 16-18, 89 

Emergent Evolution, 89, 98 

Entelechy, 96 

Epiphenomenon, consciousness as, 
7, 134 

Eternity, 130-32 

Ethics, 206-9, 338-44, also Ch. VI., 
passim 

Evil, problem of, 57-64, 126, Ch. 
VIIL., passim 

Explanation, in science, 13, 80-1, 
87, 96-7 


Flux of things, 93-5 
Force, in Physics, 18-19, 123 
Freewill, 58 n., 75-8, 93, 246, 273-4 


347 


348 


Future Life, Ch. X., passim 
in terms of quality, 312 
mythology of, 311 
process in, 253 


Genius— 
its essence, 35 7. 
psycho-neurosis and, 276-7 
Gita, The Bhagavad, 48, 178 n. 
God, as Father, 141, 283, 314 
as Judge, 59, 227-31 
as personal, 133-41, 218 
as ‘projection’, 274-84 
as Sultan, 149, cf. 237, 260 
as sharing suffering, 63, 130, 149, 
174, 231, 243-4, 253, 259 
as the Absolute, 129-32 
calamity and will of, 245-48 
Christ as image of, see Christ 
idolatry and idea of, 300-1 
not a ‘third party’, 297 
See also Law, Prayer 
Good, the problem of, 222 
Gospels, as ‘great art’, 67 7. 
historical value of, 180 n. 


Hamlet, 85, 109, 209 

‘He’ or ‘It’, 118, 1386, 179, 211-12, 
269, 271, 289, 299 

Health, Religion and mental, 278- 
81, 300, 343 

Hebrew, and problem of evil, 60-3 

vitality of race, 62 n. 

Hell, 149, 230 ., 277, 301 n. 

Herd instinct, 339-41 

History, 27, 107-8 

Human Nature in Politics, quoted, 
303-4 


Idealism, see Philosophic 
Immortality, 230, 311 n., 313-14 
Incarnation, Doctrine of, 214 
See also Christ 
Individuality, 85-8, 134, 137, 273, 
291-2, 313 
Inspiration, 111-12, 320, 334-7 
Instinct, and temptation, 191-2 
sublimation, 338-41 
Tntercession, 252-3, 293-9 


REALITY 


Jesus, the historic,Ch. VII., passim, 
refer to Synopsis 
See also Christ 
Jew, see Hebrew 
John, Gospel of, 34, 136, 180n., 
181 n., 190, 312 
Justice, 59-61, 167-9, 221, 227-9 


Karma, doctrine of, 59-60 

Knowledge, Ch. IV., passim 
Art, as means of, 34-5, 108-9 
Kant’s Theory of, 112-14 
Religion as, 108-10 

Krishna, 178 n. 


Law, as basis of Science, 78-9, 
96-8 
classification and, 82, 87-8, 273 
Divine action and, 138-9, 221, 
270-1, 288, 297 
modern theory of, 272-4 
natural and juristic, 224-31 
necessity in, 113, 272 
See also Explanation 
Law, reign of, 78-9, 188, 221, 224-6, 
230-1, 270-3 
Life— 
and Quality, 37-8, 109, 111, 114, 
311-12 | 
a principle of organisation, 90-1, 
120-1, 126, 313 
Eternal, 312 
its nature, 88-93, 98-101, 311-13 
known first hand in personality, 
35-6, 99-101, 103-5, 135, 140 
matter and, 98 
‘pool’ of, 90, 120, 313 
See also Life-Force, Individuality 
Life, every-day, 107-8 
as school of manhood, 222-4 
Life-Force, hypothesis, 118-26 
as ‘theriomorphism’, 125 
contrasted with materialism, 121-5 
Lord’s Supper, The, 46 
Luke, Gospel of, 180 n., 181 7., 182, 
191, 192 


Macbeth, quoted, 33 
Man, Divinity of, 65, 178 


INDEX OF SUBJECTS 


_ Mark, Gospel of, 180n., 181 7., 
188 n., 190, 329 
Materialism, Ch. I., passim 
and Life-Force, 125 
as ‘mechanomorphism’, 9 
Matthew, Gospel of, 180 n., 181 7., 
182 
Matter, 16-18, 98, 311. 
Mind, Materialism 
Mechanism, 10-16, 19, 21-2, 91, 
97-8, 111, 181, 289, 320 
Mechanomorphism, 9, 125 
Metaphor, power of, 8-9 
and future life, 307-8, 311 
Mind— 
and Matter, 17 
in the Universe, 21,127, 132; 174 
a function of Life or Will, 7, 
77-8, 120, 128, 131 
‘Model’, The, 14-15, 97 
Moral failure, retrieval of, 233-40, 
250 
Myth, 40, 46-7, Ch. III., passom, 
336-7 
of India and Greece, 55-6 
psychological theory of, 55 n. 
the ‘Christ-myth’, 53 


See also 


Natural Selection, 5-6, 153-9. See 
Struggle for Existence 

Neo-Vitalism, 96 

New Psychology, The. See Psy- 


chology 


Pain, problem of, 57-64, 111, 241-63 
of animals, 156-7 
mental element in, 241-3 
physiological centres of, 57 n. 
Pantheism— 
fallacy im, 141 
Personality, and immortality,313- 16 
as creative force, 179 
in animals, 135 
in God, 133-41, 214 
Philosophical Idealism, 21 
132 
Polytheism, 42-3 
Power ‘inferiority-complex’ 
147 


-2, 127-8, 


and, 


049 


Power (continued)— 

nature of, 150-1, 211-2 

Pain and, 263 

Religion as, 260, 299-303 

the Will to, 146-51, 166, 178 
Prayer, 252-3, 258, 260 

and Vision of God, 300-3 

auto-suggestion and, 284-293 

individuality and, 291-2 

methods of, 261-3, 291-2 

petitionary, 292, 293 

See also Intercession 
Progress, its conditions, 159-71 

moral, 260 

See Will to Good 
Proslogion, Anselm’s, 332 
Providence, conception of, 246-7 
Psychology— 

a ‘mixed’ science, 27, 103-7 

and ‘eall’ of Christ, 181-4, 319, 

336 

and dreams, 55 n., 320-31 

and Morals, Appendix IT. 

and myth, 55-6 

and Religion, Ch. IX., passim 

and suffering, 241-3, 253-263 

and value, 271, 342-4 

and Visions, Appendix [. 

introspection in, 103-5 

normal and abnormal, 279 
Psychology, International Congress 

of, 106, 274 n. 

Psycho-neurosis— 

and genius, 276-7 

and religion, 274 ff. 
Punishment, 59 n., 228-32, 310 
Purpose— 
mechanism and, 91-2 

power and, 150-1, 211 


Quantum theory, 95 7. 
black 


the and brown, 
154 n. 

‘Reassociation’, 255 n., 259 

Relativity, 22, 29, 97 

‘Representation’, 30-1, 39-41, 44-6, 
64-8, 214, 232 


Revelation. See Inspiration. 


Rat, 


300 


Salvation, 260-3 
See also Sin 
Science, Chs. I. and IL., passim 
and Civilisation, 160 
and sudden inspiration, 
337d 
as cleanser of Religion, 272 
its method, Ch. IV., passim 
idealism of, 160 
Shiva, 43, 174 
Sin, 58n., 63, 231, 233-41, 246, 
250 
Spectator, The, 201 n. 
Struggle for existence, 6, 102, 
152-5, 270 
Subconscious, The, 260-1, 284 n. 
Suffering. See Pain 


332, 


Taj Mahal, The, 91 
Tank attack, signal for, 34 
Telepathy, 252, 295-9 


REALITY 


The Four Gospels, an Appendix to, 
336 

The Spirit, 196 n., 320 

Theologia Germanica, 303 

‘Theriomorphism’, 125 

Trinity, doctrine of The, 213-15 

Truth, 43-7, 64, 160, 232 


| Uniformity of Nature, 224-5. See 


also Law 


Venice, 31, 46, 102 
Visions and_ auditions, 
Appendix I., passim 
See also Dreams 


Will to Good, Tho— 
and Ged, 229 
as mainspring of progress, 160, 
165, 173, 229 
Will to Pleasure, 178, 344 n. 
Will to Power. See Power 


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